


House Of Wren II -- Birth Of The Machine

by elbowsinsidethedoor



Series: The Wren Series [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-31 07:00:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 26,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12676764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elbowsinsidethedoor/pseuds/elbowsinsidethedoor
Summary: House Of Wren sequel. I promised more of the story that began with young Harold learning to sew from his mother. It featured his passion for design and tailoring, things at which he is (no surprise) as brilliant as he is with computers. In this universe Harold and John are about the same age and met at a bar in New York. John was a young soldier about to be deployed overseas. They fell in love at first sight. Nathan, Harold's friend, had hopes of seducing him, and was very jealous.By the end of Wren, Root and Shaw appeared. Grace was in the mix of the story and Arthur.Root, in this universe, is a hacker and a thief, not an assassin. About a year has passed since the end of Wren. It's September, 2001, in New York City.





	1. The Towers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Person Of Interest universe rests on the underlying events of 9/11 as the impetus for creating the machine. In this story I've given Harold a different perspective, using survivor accounts as a basis for creating his fictional experience.

Root was ahead of Harold in line but turned to look at him as they waited. She was very taken with him in the guise of Harrison Tern; a new version of her favorite genius.

“You look good enough to eat, Harry.” She brushed a speck of lint from the lapel of his caramel suit jacket. “Love those big brown eyes.” If she were into guys, she thought, she’d want one just like him.

***

He missed his glasses, but an unexpected side benefit of experimenting with tinted lenses was discovering different, interesting color palettes to work with. As a brown-eyed blond, his color choices had changed.

He accepted the compliment, and her straightening of his already straight tie. Root had few personal, physical boundaries with him. It drove John crazy, but Harold didn’t mind. He was used to the easy physicality of people in fashion and had gotten accustomed to her ways — not difficult once he began to accept her as a friend. His other close friends, Nathan and Arthur, had never been shy about touching him. John wasn’t all that happy about Nathan’s prolonged hugs and forehead kisses either, but he seemed to find Root particularly annoying; maybe because she was so dismissive of him, openly derisive, if in a teasing way. That dismissiveness actually bothered Harold more than it did John. Whenever he challenged her over a snide remark, she would deflect, saying something light and affectionate, like, “I know you love the big guy, Harry.”

She stood before him now as Amanda Gregory.

“You look well turned out, yourself,” he told her. It was true. Her make-up was flawless, understated but glowing. Her hair was swept up in a chic twist and her clothes were business couture.

Amanda Gregory and Harrison Tern were partners in a new business venture, meeting with a pair of realtors to view potential office space. Root had prevailed upon him to let her handle at least one of his cover identities. “I’ve got time to masquerade in an office,” was her pitch. He’d finally agreed. His only condition in partnering with her was that she control her love of appropriating money and assets that didn’t belong to her. She promised to be good, but he suspected she would never really give up her light-fingered ways.

“I stopped at Bloomingdale’s make-up counter after visiting the Fendi showroom this morning. Would you believe they hadn’t even unpacked the latest shipment of Lagerfeld samples,” she told him. “I helped them out by opening a few of them quietly.”

“You didn’t … did you?” He cast a more critical eye at her clothes. He couldn’t tell if she was serious. She gave him one of her enigmatic smiles before turning away to close up the space that had opened in front of them in the line. He was tempted to check the label in the back of her dress for the designer’s blocky all caps imprint, but controlled himself.

His mind wandered to John. He was feeling a little hollow without him and touched the pocket where his phone rested, thinking about when he could call him, just to hear his voice. John and Sameen were in San Francisco; they’d been gone for four days. It was surprising how these women had become so much a part of their lives in the past year. Shaw (as she preferred to be called) was like a fraternal twin to John. They’d had an instant affinity. He’d just begun working with her on a freelance basis, helping her with a difficult missing persons case. It had taken them to the west coast. Harold had spoken to him late the night before, from bed, trying not to sound unreasonable about missing him. It had been hard to say good night, to end the call. John told him it was possible they’d be able to head home the following day. Maybe tonight, Harold thought, hoping.

Root was the one who’d brought the four of them together. She’d proved to be impossible for Harold to shake (“You’re fighting a losing battle, believe me,” Shaw had said to him, early on.) He’d stopped resisting her over time, drawn in despite some misgivings. Though nothing could replace the warmth of his friend Arthur, she did share his passion for computer technology and coding. The fact that she already knew the truth about him made her part of a very small group of people with whom he had no pretense to maintain.

“At this rate we are definitely going to be late,” he said. The process of getting through security was taking much longer than he’d anticipated. They had an 8:30 appointment.

Root shrugged it off. “They’ll wait.”

Their prospective office was on the sixty-fifth floor. Tower Two, the south tower of the World Trade Center. The building was a model of (inefficient, to his mind) security. Harold wasn’t thrilled about Root’s choice of location. He considered the Twin Towers a visual blight; ugliness on a grand scale. She was adamant that an upper floor address here offered instant prestige.

When they finally reached the suite, Harold admitted to himself that she might be right. The view was incredible; the splendor of the Manhattan skyline was breath-taking. Tower One looked majestic from this perspective, reflecting sun and sky. To the east he could see the Brooklyn Bridge and the borough beyond. Root took it in nonchalantly, as if she had more important matters in mind, but Harold was captivated. The city glittered in the September sunshine, slightly unreal, like a perfect toy version of itself. He found himself considering the irony that something so ugly to look at was so beautiful to look out of.

The space was furnished with a conference table, staged with furniture to suggest how an upscale business suite might be set up. After a brief tour, the four of them sat down to review the particulars. The agents had the paper work ready at the conference table, laid out along with coffee and a plate of danishes. They’d just begun discussing terms at around 8:50, when a heart-stopping sound, like the roar of a jet engine silenced them, followed by the sound of impact and a massive explosion.

Harold gaped at the window, at a sight he barely comprehended — the sky was filled with fluttering white paper, like a crazed flock of birds. Eyes scanning up Tower One, he saw a row of blackened windows with flames shooting out of them.

One of the agents said. “I think we should probably get out of here. Whatever that was, this place is going to be madhouse.” 

The sight before Harold was so compelling, so surreal that he didn’t move. He resisted when Root took his arm. He wanted to study, to comprehend what he was seeing. How many reams of 8.5 x 11 inch business paper would it take to create such a spectacle. It must be thousands. Loose paper, from desktops, from drawers, burst filing cabinets. What was the force of impact? He was groping for understanding when he saw something he would never be able to erase from memory, something he didn’t want to believe he was seeing. There were people visible at the burning windows, tiny figures, small but unmistakable. He saw one and then another, leaping from the flames. He knew in his heart it was real but his mind fought it; people trapped by the fire, escaping the only way they could. The horror of it paralyzed him.

***

When Root heard the explosion her mind went instantly to the terrorist bombs of 1993. Her immediate calculation was an attack. She saw the jumpers and Harold’s reaction. His sensitivity and sweetness charmed her even though she counted them among his flaws. Her reason said that if bombs had gone off in the first tower, they could go off in the second. What she felt was determination that no such fate as leaping from windows would touch them.

“We need to go … now,” she said.

Harold was like the world’s smartest, most adorable rabbit, frozen in the middle of a road, staring at an oncoming car, fascinated. She tugged at his arm and when he finally got up she took his hand like he was a child. A hush had fallen over him, like veil. He wordlessly let her guide him.

The agents were out in the corridor, near the stairway, along with a growing crowd of others whose instincts told them to leave the scene despite an advisory now coming through the public address system, telling them to stay in place.

“If we survive this,” the listing agent joked, “I think the rate on that suite will definitely come down.”

 

***

Harold’s heart was hammering in his chest despite the superficial calm of what felt like an old-fashioned fire drill, like elementary school. (Move quickly children, don’t run.) One foot after the other, down and down.

Root was holding his arm, then clutching his hand again. She was surprisingly strong.

Sixty-five flights. It felt crazy to be fleeing on foot but it was the only way out. Not the only way … a treacherous thought made him wince. There was another way and his mind replayed it, his stomach dropping as if he were facing that leap.

He thought of John and how brave he was. How many horrible sights, how much danger he had survived as a soldier. The thought of John calmed him. He wondered if news of the fire would reach him, if he would be worrying. What time must it be in San Francisco? Not much past six am. He would be awake. There was no time to stop and try to call him. People were saying there was no cell service.

The air was filled with anxiety, people asking for news at every landing as newcomers joined the throng. Harold feared a stampede but people were moving in a more or less orderly way. A small stream was fighting its way up, people insisting the authorities wanted them all to stay put where they were. They said there was smoke on the lower floors. Root murmured beside him, “Fuck that, we’re getting out.”

There were twenty-five floors left to go when Harold’s feet came out from under him, the whole building was swaying around them in a sickening way, back and forth. He stayed upright, hanging on to the railing and Root hung onto him. When the swaying finally stopped there was much more fear in the faces around them and the descent became more urgent. Still, Harold saw that a shaky order remained. He had to stop to lift a woman up who’d fallen in his path. “Damn heels,” she swore. “Thank you, thank you.” Root kept people from overwhelming them as Harold helped her to her feet. There was a haunting intimacy of feeling the warmth of her armpits through the wool of her dress; the sensation stayed with him and her words echoed in his head.

***

Root thought Harold would find relief when they reached the plaza level. The space opened up but the smell of smoke was strong. She saw his gaze travel to the vast windows. The scene was a vision from hell and even Root had to stare. Ash fell like snow from the sky, coating masses of debris. She saw Harold fixate on a huge mound of … she didn’t know what, but it was oozing blood and his jaw visibly dropped.

“Don’t look,” she told him. “Hold on to me.” She put her arm around his waist, and he tore his gaze from the windows, putting his arm around her shoulders. To her vast relief he began moving with her again

***

 

Root was the only real thing to him, warm along his side. He caught the incongruous, lovely smell of her perfume and tried to live inside the scent.

They burst outside into a chaos of flashing lights and sirens, uncountable emergency vehicles in a world turning gray with ash. Police and Port Authority workers became visible in cordons directing the flow of the crowds emerging. Harold saw vast numbers of firemen heading past in the opposite direction, going toward the burning building. He would think of them often in the years to come, and the faces he saw lining the path, knowing so many did not survive.

Several blocks beyond the worst of it, Root stopped him. They’d reached a side street where a crowd had gathered at the wide open doors of a convenience store where people were handing out bottles of water, cans of soda and juice. A parked car nearby had drawn a group, doors open and radio loud, tuned to a news broadcast. Harold joined them, listening.

Planes had struck the World Trade Center. Not an accident. An attack. What he’d seen in Tower One was the result of a jet crashing into the other side of it, piloted deliberately on a suicide course. He learned that what had thrown him from his feet in the stairwell was the impact of the second plane. His gaze, like everyone’s around him, kept moving back to the scene of the burning towers. Like everyone else he kept uselessly checking his phone. No service.

Harold’s eyes were stinging, his nose, mouth and throat gritty. Root stepped in front of him. She pulled the silk scarf from around her neck and shook the ashes off it, wetting it down with bottled water.

“Hold still, sweetie,” she said, and used it to wipe his face. He blinked debris from his eyes, focusing on her, amazed by her calm, her ability to speak, aware of himself on the verge of coming apart. “We’ll rest a minute,” she told him. “But we can’t stay here. Drink the rest of this.” She handed him the water and opened a can of coke for herself.

“Thank you,” he managed to say, though he felt himself to be speaking in a dream, the depth of his gratitude was unspeakable. If not for her …

“You have nothing to thank me for. You’d never have been there if it weren’t for me.”

In the next second a collective gasp from the crowd around them drew their eyes back to the scene of the fire. Tower Two, the building they had just escaped from, was crumpling and collapsing into billowing mushroom clouds. “Oh my god,” he whispered.

“Now,” Root said, “we’re going now.”

Though they nearly ran they couldn’t escape the onrushing dust and ash. It was so thick for a time it obliterated the light and they groped their way blindly with hundreds of others heading north.


	2. The Loft

“Harold’s still not answering at the library or his cell,” Nathan said, and lowered the phone. He watched Andre checking the tape at the bottom of the drapes, applying more in places. The curtains had never been fully drawn before.

“Try John’s cell.”

“I don’t know it,” he admitted.

“It’s on my phone,” Andre said, and Nathan appreciated that all this earned him was a brief look of annoyance without much sting. Too much else was going on for Andre to give him a hard time over this. In the beginning he’d been sympathetic to Nathan’s dislike and mistrust of John, then less and less, and as time went on, not at all.

Their cell service was in and out, but the landline was working. Nathan felt like he’d been on one phone or the other since he’d opened his eyes that morning. He and Andre had been lingering in bed when calls started coming in, from Nathan’s mom, from the showroom and warehouse managers at IFT, from friends, alerting them to news of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center; news that got stranger and scarier almost minute by minute.

Arthur had called him and made him promise to let him know the minute he located Harold. The managers wanted to know if they should send people home. His mother was frightened by how close Nathan lived to the towers. She wanted him to come uptown with Andre and bring John and Harold. Between fielding calls and making calls, they had finally accounted for everyone they could think of; all the while keeping an eye on the tv. Their families were anxious but safe. IFT was closed, people staying home or making their way back home. Everyone was accounted for but Harold. It was gnawing at Nathan. Andre kept assuring him that Harold’s phone service was probably out and suggested they go see what they could from their roof.

They’d gone up, like many others in the neighborhood, confirming with their own eyes the disaster unfolding a mile to the south. It felt strange to be upstairs where they occasionally hosted parties. The outdoor furniture was still in place, uncovered. Nathan had a hastily brewed coffee in hand. So normal, while chaos reigned twenty blocks away. The skies were eerily empty of planes, making him aware of just how much he was used to the sight of contrails in his peripheral vision, used to looking up and seeing the silver shapes moving through blue sky. There was a smell of smoke in the air but the wind direction was from the north, carrying the worst of it away. Even so, they'd shut the windows downstairs to keep the smell out.

“It’s unbelievable,” Andre said. Nathan’s gaze had wandered down to the unusual foot traffic on the street. All of it moving north.

“I wish Harold would call,” he said, not for the first time, and he became aware of repeating himself. He couldn’t help it. He tried to pass off his anxiety. “He’s probably staring at his computer, completely oblivious. Or in his studio.”

“I think his phone service must be out,” Andre said, as he had before, and just as patiently — for which Nathan was grateful.

The sidewalks were full of people. People with no way to travel but on foot, subways were shut down and street traffic blocked. Nathan found himself looking for Harold in the crowds, as if his friend might magically appear.

Suddenly Andre grabbed his arm and Nathan looked up to see that one of the burning towers was collapsing. It seemed to fall slowly in on itself and drop straight down. The rise and rush of immense clouds of ash shocked them into action as the maelstrom grew and headed their way.

The closed windows didn’t stop the burst that forced its way in through every tiny crack in the glazing; they closed the shades and drapes to contain it. 

Andre was double checking the seals, applying more tape, expecting Nathan to phone John.

He steeled himself, his heart still beating hard from the rush back into the apartment and mad dash to secure the drapes. He didn’t want to talk to John. He’d begrudgingly accepted his presence in their lives but didn’t engage with him one on one, if he could help it.

It had to be done. It wasn’t just a matter of checking on him and Harold now. He’d tried repeatedly to reach his friend that morning on his cell or the library’s landline, but he hadn’t tried to reach John. If that bastard wanted to talk to him and his phone worked, he could call Nathan or Andre himself. But now, he and Andre needed to get out, to move farther north. The library should be far enough away for the air to be clear. The place was enormous and might be their best bet for a place to stay in walking distance. Hotels would be filling with stranded travelers. The question was how long it would take for the dust clouds outside to settle before they could make their way uptown.

John picked up on the second ring. A good sign. If John had service, Harold might have it soon.

***

Shaw had showered and was packing the last of her stuff, waiting for John to finish up in the bathroom. She turned on the tv to catch the weather, but the news was on. Every channel. Pictures of New York. The World Trade Center was on fire, the twin towers burning. She frowned, absorbing the news that these massive buildings had both been hit by planes.

She knew exactly where Root and Harold were, and when they were there. Root had sounded ridiculously excited about the appointment when they talked the day before. The sixty-fifth floor. Maybe fifteen or twenty below where the plane had crashed. Fire, jet fuel, structural damage. Shaw stood immobile, staring at the possibility of their deaths. They could have gotten out, but they might not have. Root’s phone did not respond. What would it mean to lose her. She pictured her face. A beautiful and supremely annoying person … who’d carved out a large territory in Shaw’s life.

It was 6:35 AM. She and John had a 9:00 flight.

John Riley was the closest thing she’d had to a friend, maybe ever. There hadn’t been anyone since her brief stint in the military, where physical competence and keeping her mouth shut had made her an accepted part of a social group. Her military career had ended abruptly when her disorder was uncovered. The army quietly chucked her out.

A lot of people were attracted to her looks; they imagined loving her or being her friend, but they fell away so quickly when she disappointed them, that she didn’t see much point in trying. People wanted things that baffled her, made her uncomfortable. Even Root, at times.

Not John. He didn’t ask her to love him or pretend to care in ways she didn’t; he didn’t look at her like she was crazy when she missed emotional cues. He liked to tease her but there was no judgement. Harold often said that she and John were fraternal twins, but Shaw knew it wasn’t true. They weren’t alike, not really. Her emotions were quiet. She sensed his ran deep and fierce, but the surface was quiet. It was easy to be with him.

This might be enough to break him. If he had a weakness, she thought, it was his passion for Harold. This might be more than he could take. She wasn’t sure how she would cope with that. And then he was standing next to her. He was dressed sharp for the trip and for seeing Harold, in one of those suits that would cost thousands if he had to pay for them. He smelled good, he looked good, but his attention to the tv screen was intense.

“Air travel’s gonna shut down, if it hasn’t already,” he said. He turned his head to look at her. She saw the intensity in his eyes but his voice was even. “We’ll get a car. We can be there in 48 hours.”

“Right.”

It meant driving continuously — and with the credit cards he carried it would be in something sleek and fast, and if they couldn't rent one she was pretty sure he'd buy one. This was good. This she could work with. She didn’t have to think about losing Root. She was with her friend, he had a plan, and he was rock solid beside her.

 

***

 

Andre tore off the end of the sticky duct tape, feeling a little guilty for making Nathan call John. He knew it was hard for him but he was unwilling to indulge him in it. He heard him say John’s name and felt a flood of relief. Finally they’d gotten through to their friends. He expected to hear him ask about the library, but he seemed to be listening, not speaking. John must be explaining why they’d been out of touch. Then Nathan made a sound that alarmed him, like he was struggling to breathe. He was slowly lowering the phone to its cradle. He hadn’t spoken a word.

“What is it?” Andre got up off his knees, approaching the couch. Nathan had his hand up, as if to ward off questions or keep him from coming too close. “You’re scaring me, Nathan. Is it something about John, about Harold? Oh god.” Nathan shook his head, tried to clear his throat, there were tears starting in his eyes. His voice was hushed.

“John is on his way from San Francisco, in a car. Harold isn’t with him. Harold is … here. He was in the second tower for a meeting at 8:30 this morning. The sixty-fifth floor.”

“No … no.” Andre sank to the couch. He couldn’t take it in. Harold in the World Trade Center. It made no sense. He hated those buildings. Why would he be there? Was there a supplier there that Andre didn’t know about? He struggled to remember exactly where the plane struck, if he’d heard about people getting out. Harold couldn’t be gone. 

“Poor John,” he said. “He must be losing his mind.”

“John?” Nathan looked at him as if how John felt was of no consequence.

“This has to be killing him,” Andre said.

“Killing him?” Nathan’s voice was incredulous. “My boy … is gone.“ His voice broke. Andre didn’t point out that Harold was not Nathan’s boy. Objective truth didn’t exist in this moment, only pain. There were ways in which Nathan never believed, and Andre suspected he never would, that anyone loved Harold as much as he did. Lover or friend, it didn’t matter.

“Nathan, you need to breathe. We don’t know anything for sure yet.” He saw the man’s eyes focus on the tv screen. The news had been droning on in the background but he caught the words “ … coming down.” It was the first tower, Tower One, the one that had been hit first but stubbornly stayed upright. They watched as it fell. To Andre it felt like the world was ending, piece by piece.

The loud sound of the downstair’s door buzzer made them both jump.

 

***

 

Harold had been stumbling blind, gripping Root’s hand. But he squinted, his eyes open to slits as they crossed a street, and he suddenly recognized where they were. He pulled at her to change direction. They’d just passed the entrance to Nathan’s building. Somehow, through the murk of the air and his brain, it had registered. The loft. Nathan and Andre.

“This way,” he choked the words out. “Nathan!” To his immense relief she didn’t fight him but let him draw her back twenty feet, and up a short flight of stairs into the old factory’s side entrance. The lower floors were all retail and office space. The top floor was his friend’s loft. Please be there, he prayed, hitting the button relentlessly.

“Hello?” It was Andre’s voice.

“Andre it’s me, Harold. And my friend, Root.”

“Oh my god, I’m coming for you.”

A loud answering buzz signaled the lock release and they went through. The air was hazed with dust but blessedly clearer than outside. He blinked repeatedly, trying to clear the grit from his eyes. Root looked like she’d been rolled in gray flour.

At the end of the hall, by the industrial elevator was a long coat rack and Harold’s psyche drank in the sight of familiar things, coats and jackets that belonged to his friends. He could hear the clunking mechanics of the car making its way down to them. He felt tears gather in his eyes.

 

***

 

“We can’t take people in,” he said, but Andre had already left his side to go see who was downstairs. They both thought it would be strangers seeking refuge from the street. Nathan felt in no shape to deal with people. 

“The least we can do is bring someone water, let them shelter downstairs.”

The camera wasn’t state-of-the-art like Harold had at the library, but Andre was lifting the receiver that activated it and was peering into it.

“Hello.”

Nathan froze at the sound of Harold’s voice, tinny and scratchy on the speaker from across the room, but it was him.

“Oh my god,” Andre said. “I’m coming for you. Nathan, start boiling water.”

“What?” 

“For tea, for Harold!” he said, as he shut the elevator grate.

Nathan rose from the couch on shaky legs, his heart and head overcome with colliding currents of disbelief and joy. Water, he thought. Tea. He’s alive. Of course he’ll want tea. He wiped his eyes, plying himself to the task Andre had given him, filling the kettle with water and putting it on the stove, listening to sound of the elevator car making its way down. He’s alive. My boy is alive. He was grateful for the time it was taking the elevator to go down and would take for it to come back up. Time for him to blow his nose and try to calm himself. And then he remembered, John. John needed to know. For the second time, Nathan picked up the phone. This time he hit redial.

“Nathan,” John answered.

For the first time Nathan felt no anger, no resentment toward the man. How long it would last, he didn’t know, but all he felt in the moment was a profound sympathy. When he’d spoken to him the first time he’d wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him for the steady sound of his voice, recounting the bare facts of where he was and where Harold had been.

“He’s here, John. He and Root are here.”

The elevator grate was opening and Nathan saw what had caused the delay. Clothes had been left downstairs. Harold was wrapped in a raincoat of his and Root was wearing a coat of Andre’s, both of them bare-legged. They looked like kids dressed in their parents’ clothes. Nathan held the phone up toward Harold, “It’s John,” he said.


	3. Sierra Nevada

It was their last morning in San Francisco. John showered, anticipating getting what he’d missed for four days. He was excited, his heart, his body. He gave his semi-hard cock a stroke but told himself to save it for later, for Harold. It was time to get out of the shower, get dressed and head for the airport.

He’d kept his best suit for the trip home. To his own eyes it didn’t look much different from the others but Harold always paid special attention when he wore it, caressing the fabric with his eyes, touching it (and John inside it.) He would talk about the quality of the fabric, the charcoal color, saying it was as deep as black, but warmer.

Giving himself a last look in the mirror, he called out to Shaw, letting her know he was just about ready, but she didn’t answer.

He was surprised to find her transfixed by the tv. As he walked up to see what she was watching, he understood why. He understood it much too well. The feelings that rose up inside him had to be controlled by the force of his will.

Years of tactical experience, his training, kept him steady on his feet, focused on what was happening, evaluating what could be done. He quietly hit Harold’s number on his phone but didn’t expect to get through. Cell towers would be overwhelmed, there would be power outages. There would be panic. This country had never experienced terrorism on this scale.

He needed to mobilize. Rage wouldn’t help him, despair wouldn’t get him where he needed to go. Two days, if they pushed. They could be across country in two days. Shaw was good for it.

They hailed a cab and John told the driver, “Closest car dealer.”

Within half an hour he was buying a Mercedes land cruiser outright, sealing the deal on the lot while Shaw was getting food across the street. Even in the dealership the news assailed him from a big screen tv in the back of the showroom. Any other day it would have been displaying promo videos. Not today. The sales staff was gathered around it to watch live coverage of Lower Manhattan. He heard someone say, “Oh Jesus, it’s coming down,” as he slid his credit card back in his wallet.

He and the guy who’d just sold him the cruiser both turned and saw Tower Two’s slow-motion collapse. He grit his teeth and looked away, resisting both the heat of his frustration at being powerless … and a sorrow so deep it could swallow him whole if he let it. Keep moving, he told himself.

Seeing Shaw helped. She arrived with bags of fast food, eating french fries while he loaded their luggage.

“What happened to my SLK?” she asked him. She’d pointed out a cherry red roadster before she left, and said, “That one.”

“Not happening.”

“And that’s because … “ She waited.

“I’m not spending two days cramped in a sardine can with you.” He saw her eyes flick upward, measuring him, like she’d never noticed how tall he was before. “Did you think we were the same height?” he asked her, suspecting she did.

“Whatever.” She got in the car.

A lot of people, he’d learned, found Shaw hard to deal with. Her bluntness. People thought she was rude, unfeeling. It surprised him when she told him she’d been diagnosed with a disorder and discharged from the military.

“Their loss,” was all he had to say. He found her more or less, perfect. It relaxed him to be with her, like breathing clean air. She was steady. She was strong and she was honest. And she made him laugh. Right now she was exactly what he needed to keep his head on straight, handing him a burger, putting massive black coffees in the cup holders. She assessed the luxury interior and said, “Okay. Pretty cool … for a glorified station wagon.”

They were finally on the highway, heading west on I-80 when his phone chimed. Shaw picked it up from the console. “Ingram home,” she said, and handed it to him.

John didn’t want to talk to Nathan Ingram. He wasn’t ready to communicate with anyone back home yet. None of them knew who Harrison Tern was or where he was. John wasn’t ready to deal with telling them; his own grip too tentative. Nathan could destroy him right now, if John wasn’t careful. The man was the opposite of Shaw. Too emotional. Soft, volatile, hostile. Nothing he wanted to deal with.

“John …”

Before he could go on, John cut him off. Hearing Nathan’s voice, he knew he couldn’t lie to him, so he’d give him the truth. He'd do it as succinctly as he could without getting drawn into the morass.

“Nathan, this is not a good time. I’m in San Francisco with Shaw, heading back as fast as I can. Harold is not with me. He was in the tower. Tower Two … at 8:30 this morning. An appointment with a realtor, using the fake name, Harrison Tern. Root was with him. They were on the sixty-fifth floor.” He heard Nathan gasp and the pitch of his anguish triggered every ounce of defense John had; he would not, he could not break down and share the pain radiating through the phone. “I can’t talk to you now. If anything comes up … I’ll call.” He disconnected, dropping the phone back on the console between their seats. He gave a quick shake of his head, as if he could physically clear his mind.

Shaw grabbed the phone the next time it rang, maybe five, maybe ten minutes later.

“Ingram again,” she said. John held his hand out for it.

“Nathan.” He kept his voice as neutral as possible.

“He’s here, John. He and Root are here.”

John’s foot hit the gas to power his way through gaps in traffic, reaching the breakdown lane and slowing to a stop, his heart pounding, Shaw swearing at him, looking at him like he’d lost his mind.

“Nathan’s got them,” he told her.

Her phone started ringing. After a second’s delay to continue giving him the look, she snatched up her phone and got out of the car, walking a distance away to sit on the guard rail. John leaned forward, his arm on the steering wheel, head on his arm, holding the phone to his ear with his eyes closed. Waiting. Tension like invisible bands of iron were letting go, causing small tremors in the muscles of his chest and stomach, his thighs. Harold’s voice, crying. It was beautiful.

“My baby,” John whispered, drinking him in. He listened to him weep, loving him. When the sniffling quieted, he said, “I wish I was with you. Let Nathan and Andre take care of you. Let Root.” In his mind he was covering his living, breathing lover in kisses. In this moment he begrudged nothing to the others who loved Harold, wanting him to have every comfort there was.

“Oh John.” A tear drenched sigh. “She saved my life. I was useless.”

“Not useless, ever. Precious. She's the lucky one. I'd give anything to have been in her place."

He sat back, gazing out at a sky so blue, the color seemed unreal. The sky over New York had looked like this, he thought, remembering the tv images. Clear and blue. So wrong to see a fire raging against that sky.

He felt like a man coming back from the dead. “I love you. I’ll see you in 48 hours, less. Let me talk to Nathan.”

“You want to talk to me?” The voice of his long-time rival now sounded like the voice of a friend.

“Take care of him, Nathan. Hug him, kiss him … don’t let him be alone. What kind of shape is your place in?”

“Not great. Good enough to get these two cleaned up. Eventually we’re going to head uptown and camp out at the library, until things calm down.”

“Good. Everyone else, is everyone okay?” John could spare a thought now for the world beyond Harold.

“Yep. I’ve got to call Arthur next. Let him know.”

“Thank you, Nathan.”

 

***

 

Being naked in the shower with Root was not erotic, but there was comfort and pleasure in it that were physical. The loft’s bathroom was luxurious and the shower double sized, with two shower heads. He’d urged her to go ahead and shower first but she’d peeked out the bathroom door, tilting her head in the way she had.

“It’s a pretty big shower, Harry. Room for two if you’re not too shy to share.” He hesitated though he was desperate to wash the grit from his skin and his hair. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman,” she promised, and it surprised a laugh out of him.

There were echoes of being with Grace. He hadn’t been in the presence of a naked woman, at least not while naked himself, since being with Grace. At a handful of shows when looks of his had been paired with women’s wear designs, there were models of both genders in various states of undress behind the scenes. That was different. Models dressing and undressing were like athletes in a locker room. It was an impersonal show of flesh toward a specific professional goal.

Root didn’t have much in common with Grace, though physically both were slim and pretty. What echoed for Harold were his memories of the ways she had taken care of him, of his father, her kindness. Root’s kindness had a hard shell. A veneer of contempt for most people that was disturbing, not like Grace at all. But to him, Root was kind.

When she asked him to wash her back, he did, marveling at how small she was, bones and frame, compared to a man. He massaged her soapy shoulders and tried not to think about … anything. She turned in his hands and put her arms around him. He hugged her, he kissed her cheek. The soapy softness of her felt nice against his body.

“Thank you, Root. Thank you for everything,” he told her, and kissed her cheek again. Then let her go, stepping back under the spray of water to rinse.

“Sorry,” she said. “I guess that wasn’t very gentlemanly of me.”

“It’s okay,” he told her. “It was … ladylike.” He wondered briefly if she wanted something else, something more from him, but dismissed it. If she did, it was best not to encourage it. His feelings for her were not sexual and the time when he would have had sex with a friend, for the sake of affection, had passed. There was only one person he wanted.

 

***

 

John had his seat tilted all the way back, he was resting his eyes, hoping to sleep. He’d given up the wheel in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

“Do you think they’re fucking?” Shaw asked. His eyes opened. 

“Who.”

“Harold and Root.”

“No.”

“People that go through shit together, sometimes they want to fuck afterwards.”

John sighed. “Are you trying to say you want me, Shaw.” The dark laugh that came out of her made him smile.

“You wish.”

“Why are you bugging me about this?”

“I don’t want you to get weird if you find out they did it. Root’s a pain in the ass but I can’t let you hurt her. I know that woman. She’d totally fuck Harold.”

“If it would make him feel any better right now to fuck your girlfriend, I hope he’s riding her like a pony.”

“You’re such a dick. I’m serious. It’s a real thing, Riley.”

“I know it is … and I don’t care. If I were to bet, I’d put my money on Ingram before Root.”

“Because he’s a guy?”

“Because Harold’s got better taste than you do, Shaw.” She whacked the side of his leg really hard but quieted down after that. He figured she was satisfied that her crazy girlfriend was safe from him if anything happened.

Teasing her put him in a good mood and he drifted toward sleep. He’d told her the truth, he didn’t care. If any creature comfort would make these days easier for Harold, he was in favor of it. But he believed in his heart, that Harold wasn’t interested in fucking anyone but him. And he was right.


	4. Hugs

Harold’s contacts were clean from soaking in one of Andre’s spare lens cases. It felt like a bath for his eyes when he put them back in.

“You’re too good to us,” he said, his vision swimming back into focus as he blinked away the excess moisture. His once protege, now treasured friend, had brought them his own clothes to dress in.

“I love this sweater,” Root said, petting the cashmere turtleneck he’d given her to wear. Harold saw that even in an emergency situation Andre’s talent for picking the right clothes came through. Root looked lovely in the sweater’s steel-blue color and it clung to her loosely, beautifully. He’d put them both in jeans of his own, rolled at the cuff. He’d snuck Harold into a lavender shirt of his, a color he’d often badgered him to try.

“See,” Andre said, gesturing at the bathroom’s full length mirror, “this color is great on you.” Harold peered at his reflection.

“Too pastel for the actual color of my eyes. I’d look like an Easter basket,” he said, but smiled. “Thank you for all this.”

“It’s a good thing …” Andre said, giving them a pretend, critical eye, “… that I’m dressing you guys in our things and not the other way around. I might be able to squeeze into your loosest clothes but you would have had to wrap Nathan in a sheet.” He frowned and added, “Of course it would be John’s clothes you would have put us in.” He gave Harold a kind of sad smile at the mention of John’s name. “He’ll get here, Harold. I just hope he’s not driving like a maniac.”

“If he isn’t,” Root said, “I’m sure the little dervish he’s driving with, is.”

At about the same time Root and Shaw were becoming fixtures of his life, Nathan and Andre had been becoming less so. It saddened him to think about and it was difficult not to now, aware of how little socializing had happened between Root and Andre. They'd met a few times, not often. Harold still saw Andre at IFT, but he’d been turning over more and more of the work to him and had encouraged him to include his own designs in the past two collections. His own presence there was now intermittent. Of course, the less time Harold spent there, the less time John did. And then there was Nathan. His stubborn antipathy toward John.

He fastened the belt he’d been given and looped the excess. He felt Andre’s hand on his shoulder.

“I wish you’d go spend some time with Nathan, Harold. He needs to hold you.” A roughness crept into his voice. “When he thought he’d lost you … he died right in front of my eyes. Between hearing where you were from John, and when you showed up ….” His voice trailed off. Harold hugged him and Andre squeezed him in turn.

“I will,” Harold said. It was agony to think of the pain he’d caused them.

“If it’s not too forward of me,” Root said, with a sigh, “I’m going to raid your kitchen, make us something to eat.”

“That would be great,” Andre said. “I’ll come help in a minute.”

When they were alone, Harold let go of him reluctantly and said, “There are some things I should probably explain.” 

“Like why you were renting space in a place you hate … or why you suddenly decided to experiment with colored contacts? You’ve told me a hundred times you prefer glasses. You look awesome in the lenses, by the way. Explanations can wait. I don’t think Nathan can. Go put the man back together for me.”

 

***

 

“Designated chef,” Root said, passing him with a smile on her way to the kitchen area of the loft.

“Help yourself,” Nathan told her. He couldn’t imagine eating anything himself. He’d brewed a pot of tea. It sat on the coffee table in front of him with a few cups. Harold had drunk a little when he got off the phone with John but Andre had hustled them off quickly to the bathroom to shower. Now the tea was probably cold. Nathan had no energy to do anything about it. He was frozen in place on the couch, his emotions torn. He thought about pouring himself a drink, but didn’t. He knew he should be happy, but he’d plunged so deep into pain that the surface where things were supposed to be okay, didn’t feel real. He didn’t know what to do with himself; unable to stop watching the news, unable to help with the mundane tasks of finding clothes or organizing food. He could see the filthy shoes they’d taken off and left near the entry. It would be good if he could clean some of the dirt off them, he thought, but the thought didn’t translate into action.

Harold emerged with Andre, both looking a little like they’d been crying. Andre smiled at him and Harold was coming straight toward him. The brown eyes made his sensitive face look even more soulful.

“Lie down, Nathan,” Harold said to him. “I need the full body hug.”

Feeling like he’d been set free, Nathan put his feet up, fixed the pillow under his head and gladly opened his arms. Harold stretched out above him, fitting himself familiarly in his arms, his face warm against Nathan’s neck. It reminded him of the night he’d waited in anguish for him to come back from an impulsive encounter with a soldier; the night John had come into their lives. He kissed Harold’s freshly-washed hair, his forehead, and hugged him, slowly settling into stroking his back. He didn’t try to talk, he knew he might cry. He just breathed him in and let the welcome pressure of Harold relaxing into him soothe him. Not his lover. Not his alone, but still … his in a way that no one could take away or deny, not even John.

 

***

 

A million people evacuated from south of Canal St., streaming north, streaming outward over the bridges into Queens and New Jersey. Harold and his friends were their own small cell within the mass exodus. They were lucky to be together, to be well-supplied and have only a couple of miles to go. All along the path, they encountered stores and restaurants where owners were giving food and supplies away, some because they’d lost power and others just to help the stranded.

The library had power and Harold was very happy to share his home with his friends. The place had never been so full, two of its guest rooms occupied, people lounging in the living areas, congregating in the kitchen.

Harold gave Root her own room but in the middle of the night she appeared by his bed. He was still awake, his mind restless.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked her.

“Not really, just a little lonely.” He pulled back the covers.

“Get in. I’m having trouble sleeping too.”

“Thinking about the big guy?”

“Always,” he admitted. “But also about what happened, about the attack. There has to be a way something like that can be defended against,” he said. “It must have been carefully planned. Somewhere there are records, intelligence, if one knew what files to hack.”

Root settled on her side facing him.

“The government will be frantically looking for a way to protect its frightened flock, Harry. Don’t get involved.” She sounded tired. “Let it go now. You need to sleep. Come on, I’ll be the big spoon.”

The drowsiness in her voice touched him and he thought she was probably right, as least as far as sleep was concerned. He turned on his side and she snuggled close to him, the softness of her breasts pillowing his back.

“Good night, Root.”

“Night, Harry.”

He focused on her even breathing and let himself sink toward sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it, LG! :)


	5. New Jersey

Shaw woke up to an overcast sky and a sense that it was early. She vaguely wondered if it would be a gray day or burn off. 

“Where are we?”

“New Jersey.”

She adjusted her seat upright. Her stomach growled and she wanted coffee. She spotted a Food & Lodging Next Exit sign.

“Should have traded off hours ago. Take the exit, I need food and then I’m driving.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Not stopping.”

“I’m starving.” 

“You can wait an hour, we’re practically there.” She didn’t want to wait an hour, didn’t see the point of waiting an hour.

“Harold is gonna love you just as much if you get there a half hour later, take the exit.”

He didn’t budge from the fast lane. She knew she’d finished off the last of their food the night before. She tried a different tack, knowing the man was immune to hunger.

“Has Harold ever even seen what you look like after two days without shaving? It’s not pretty.”

She actually thought he looked fine, but that wasn’t the point, she had to go for his weakness. The sound of the turn signal was the sound of victory and she hid her smile. It surprised her when he cruised past the restaurant and into the motel parking lot.

“I’m going to check in here and take a shower,” he told her. “You go eat. We’re out of here in half an hour.”

“Dude, you’re gonna pay for a room just to take a shower?” She’d figured he would shave in the men’s room.

“People do it all the time, Shaw.”

“Yeah … to fuck, maybe.” He was already heading around to to get his suitcase. Actually, given a moment to consider it, a shower sounded pretty good to her. She felt grimy from two days in the same clothes with no time to do more than splash her face during brief pit stops — the only kind he allowed. She got out and reached in the other side door for her bag, facing him through the car. “Me after you,” she told him.

He gave her a look. She gave it back.

“What? I can’t have a shower? Seriously, you need to get a grip. We’re gonna check in, get cleaned up,” she spoke slowly, as if explaining something to a child. “Then we eat and I drive into the city.”

He’d been solid up to now but with Harold looming on the horizon, she thought, he was getting squirrelly around the edges. He gave her one of his tired, almost-grins.

“They’ll think you’re a hooker.”

“Whatever. I’m hungry enough to do you for pancakes. After the shower,” she added, which made him laugh.

They reached the library four hours later. Not her fault. It was her first taste of how crazed the city had become in the aftermath. Security at every bridge and tunnel. Police at every intersection for long stretches where power was still out. A back log of trucks waiting, stuck when the mayor had stopped all incoming traffic for 24 hours, everyone fighting for access.

She itched to check out her office but Root had reported everything was cool there. Her hole-in-the-wall apartment was up on 84th Street. Her original plan had been to drop John and head uptown but by the time she reached the library, it seemed like a better idea to crash there. Food, bedroom … Root to help her unwind. Maybe a shot of something or other.

Her buddy was sound asleep. Not surprising after driving all night, the hot shower; a meal in his belly. He slept like a soldier, she thought. Lightly, before he’d trusted her, like the dead once he decided he was safe with her behind the wheel.

“Wake up, you’re home, lover-boy.”

 

***

 

It wasn’t just Harold Finch’s friends that needed reassurance in the wake of the towers coming down. For every cover identity he and John were maintaining, Harold had to make contact. That meant among other things, talking to his neighbor Alison in Park Slope. She was upset about paper debris and ash that were still drifting from the crash sites into the streets and backyards of the neighborhood.

“It makes me cry when I find the things in the yard,” she told him. “Thank god you and John are out of the city. I was nervous when I couldn’t get in touch.”

“We’re fine,” he assured her, almost feeling fine as he mentally assumed the role of Harold Larkin. “I was worried about you. I’m glad I was finally able to get through.” That was his excuse for not reaching her sooner — busy phone circuits covered a multitude of sins. Studying his schedule as they spoke, he told her he thought he and John would be stuck on the west coast for a while but be home in time for her Halloween party.

Others needed only an email contact, but for an event like this that touched so many lives, he needed a context and story for each identity. Where were you on September 11th? It would be a question people asked for many years to come, something one would need to answer.

With a sigh, he ticked off each contact made, working on his laptop in the bedroom. The living room/ work area had been taken over by his friends and he didn’t want anyone peering over his shoulder. He’d had the talk with Andre finally, probably long overdue, explaining his need for cover identities. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust him, he did. The fewer people who knew, however, the better.

John should be here, he thought, glancing at the time, feeling a flutter of anxiety. He’d gotten up early, leaving Root asleep (again) in his bed. After his shower he’d taken extra time to dress, selecting a favorite suit, feeling better with each button done up on his waistcoat. He was longing for John. It made him smile a little to think of him undoing the buttons as he did them up. He resolved to put those thoughts on hold, to get work done. The work needed to be done and he needed the distraction from wanting John to arrive every second.

Once the work was done, the active waiting began again. He left his room and his laptop to go see what his friends were up to.

Nathan and Andre were sprawled on his couch, one at either end, their legs tangled. Each had part of a newspaper, of which there was a stack on the coffee table. Harold liked seeing how Nathan absently stroked Andre’s leg with his sock-clad foot. Root was at the work table, a steaming mug of coffee beside her. Her light, rapid keystrokes made a pleasant sound.

“They’ll get here, Harry,” she said, without looking up. Then she sat back and smiled at him.

“Yes, I know. I’m fine.” He casually picked up a section of the paper, sat down in one of the armchairs in a way that he hoped looked relaxed. He gazed at the paper, disappointed to see he’d picked up the sports section. He glanced up to see if Root was still watching him. She was.

“Checking the box scores?” she asked. It sounded like a trick question.

“I do like some sports,” he said. He sighed and perused the front page, hoping for something of interest, thinking he should make an effort to educate himself about the local teams.

The security system chimed. Andre and Nathan both looked up. Root looked at the door monitor on her screen. “They’re here,” she said.

Harold could hear the sound of the front door opening. His heart beat harder and his face felt hot with a sudden rush. He wanted to run down the stairs but sat still, the impulse to run at war with the feeling that his legs might shake if he stood up.

 

***

John had anticipated the sight of him, but the reality was much sweeter, sweet enough to bring tears to his eyes. Adorable uneven dimples, beautiful eyes and expressive mouth, the face he loved. But it wasn’t his beauty that made John cry, it was what he’d almost lost. He briefly scanned the room, giving a quick nod to their friends before he reached Harold as he was rising from his chair. He managed a sort of smile before he swept him up in his arms like a bride or a baby and headed out of the room. He couldn’t speak. Harold was hugging his neck, relaxing into his hold as he carried him, his soft voice murmuring. “It’s okay, John. You’re home now.”


	6. More Tears

Nathan wasn’t looking forward to the reunion of John and Harold but he was resigned to it. Staying at the library had proved to be more like a fantasy vacation than a hardship. To have Andre and Harold both so close to him (and neither one of them mad at him, impatient with him) made the days golden despite the reason they were there. What on earth could be better he thought, than rising from Andre’s loving arms in the morning to find Harold drinking tea at his computer or in the kitchen, in his sumptuous robe, looking up at him with a warm smile and greeting. Willing to be kissed, looking at him with affection.

Even Root, their very odd friend, didn’t disturb his happiness. Harold’s brilliance had dazzled Nathan since he’d seen him rise to speak in a Commutative Algebra class. It was mildly surprising, but not a shock, that his friend had designed software capable of detecting the PI Nathan hired to investigate John. How that PI and her girlfriend had become close friends of Harold’s was never fully explained to him. He gathered it involved the brilliance of Root, whom he quietly acknowledged as a fellow devotee of the friend he loved. She was another member of the species of genius humans to which his friend (and he begrudgingly noted Arthur) belonged. She’d apparently deduced the existence of Harold like a mathematician solving a complex theoretical equation, and then she’d found him. Nathan enjoyed her flippant denigration of John (mostly out of Harold’s earshot.)

For two days, it felt like all was right with Nathan’s world even though the outside world was in chaos. Like the others, he was watching when the soldier arrived, heard him come up the stairs. He expected to see him as he always did, handsome, Nathan would admit, but severe; given to smugness when he did show emotion. He expected his arrival to chill the warm nest the library had become. He did not expect to see tears in the icy blue eyes, to see through the mask of his stoicism.

It was Root who broke the silence after John had carried Harold away.

“Tarzan’s home,” she sighed. Sameen appeared soon after. A small, dark, puzzling woman. As strange a choice for Root, Nathan thought, as John was for Harold. Was there something about these too-smart types that needed dense, dark partners?

“Did he cry?” Shaw asked. Her arrival was much cooler than John’s. It was Root’s eyes that sparkled, not her girlfriend’s.

“He did,” Root answered, rising from the work station.

“I bet him a hundred bucks he would.”

“Did he take the bet, sweetie?” Root asked.

“No. But he owes me anyway, the big baby.”

Like John, Shaw acknowledged him and Andre with a nod. Nathan thought Root would kiss her but she didn’t. She picked up Shaw’s suitcase, kissing her with her eyes, and said, “I’ll show you our room.” These two, he figured, would enact their reunion behind closed doors.

Andre looked thoughtful, his hazel eyes shiny.

“Did you see, Nathan … not just the tears.“ 

“I did,” he admitted. It wasn’t just that the soldier could cry. It was the glimpse behind the mask. Nathan felt he’d seen for a moment the depths Harold saw when he looked at John. He sat up from the couch pillows. “Would you like to see our room?” he asked his lover, and Andre smiled.

“I’d love to see our room.”

“Shall I carry you?”

Andre’s smile was so sweet in answer that he was tempted to try — but Andre took his hand and led him, so Nathan followed obediently.

 

***

An odd calm overtook Harold in the presence of John’s weeping, a welling up love, not tears. John didn’t cry easily, it took him in fits and starts as he attacked Harold’s clothes. Harold tried to help him but John was impatient and Harold let him have his way with buttons, let him pull and push at fabric to reach skin, face hot against his bare chest, pressing into his stomach.

The waistcoat was open, and his shirt, but his undershirt was shoved up to his armpits, his pants caught at his ankles. John had shucked him like an oyster but was eating him from the shell.

John’s hunger, his passion and tears made Harold feel himself brought to life, brought into exquisite focus. He was damp from his thighs to his throat from being licked and sucked on, from tears. When the sucking intensified between his legs Harold had come helplessly, ecstatically in the hot mouth.

His lover’s face when at last he was quiet and allowing himself to be seen, to be kissed, was beautiful despite the bruised look around his eyes. Harold finished undressing himself.

“Sorry … about the clothes,” John murmured, watching him.

“Doesn’t matter.”

John smiled a little. “Sure.” Harold lay his clothes on one of the bedside chairs, resisting the urge to hang things up properly. He began working on John’s clothes, taking his shoes, his socks to reveal the maimed feet. The missing toes, the scars, moved him as always. This time he didn’t resist the urge to kiss, to let his tongue roam over the hurt places. John didn’t protest. He uttered a satisfied pleasure sound. Harold knew the scars themselves had no feeling but the flesh around them was very sensitive.

He’d been pretty sure his very excited partner had come, sensing it in the tensing of his body as he’d sucked, his gasp for air when he’d lifted his head. Now he wiped the smeared semen from his belly. John’s cock twitched with interest, firming in his grasp as Harold washed him clean. He glanced up to meet the lapis gaze. 

“I saved it all for you,” John said. The love shining from his eyes, the sense of him missing him through the four days of separation, quite apart from the horror that followed, was what started the tears in Harold’s eyes. The sight of his body, real and solid, arrayed before him in all its glory, so charged with life and strong despite its many scars. Harold grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the nightstand and lay himself down, to fall apart in John’s arms.

He heard himself sob like a baby, a terrible keening sound coming out of him through the tissues he held to his face. He couldn’t control it but it didn’t matter because John was holding him, whispering soft sounds, patient sounds, stroking his back to soothe but not stop his tears.


	7. Mr and Mrs Mouse

It was business, almost as usual, by the time Halloween arrived. A superficial normalcy asserted itself in the city, people determined to get on with their lives. It was tender new skin over a deep wound that might never heal completely. Every glance at the skyline, a reminder of loss. Harold sensed a change in himself, in the city, and he suspected, in the fabric of the national consciousness. A zeitgeist shift.

They were in the Park Slope brownstone. Harold still had his sweater and jacket on, standing at the top of the stairs to the basement. He felt cranky, and cold. A cruel dip in the jet stream was giving them a preview of winter. He thought idly of the neighborhood’s kids trick or treating; they’d be covering up their costumes with coats. He missed his warm home, his work space. Harold Larkin didn’t have the resources of Harold Finch. The need to put in time in Brooklyn had come up just as he was making progress with his newest project, expanding the capabilities of his surveillance system.

John was tinkering with the furnace. It made Harold impatient. He was sure if anything was wrong with it he could fix it better himself, but John had insisted he stay upstairs where it was warmer.

“Alison really wants everyone in costume tomorrow,” he called out. “Is it broken? I’m freezing.”

“It’s working.”

“Sorry to whine.” He was standing by the stove when John came upstairs, waiting for water to boil for tea. He needed to think about what his cover would consider for a Halloween costume, a detail he shouldn’t have left so late. “What on earth would Larkin dress up as?”

He watched John wash his hands and when he realized the man was about to put his arms around him, it lifted his mood a little.

“Probably something nerdy, and cute, like him.”

“What about Mellman?” Harold asked, hugging him, grateful for John’s patience as well as his body heat.

“Something sexy, like a stripper. What do you think, a bow tie, no shirt.” Harold had to smile at the thought of that and rubbed the cold tip of his nose on John’s neck.

“I dare you. No, wait, I don’t dare you. Don’t even think about it.”

“What should I think about?” Harold’s blood flowed hotter when John kissed him and pulled him in tighter, a hand roaming downward over his ass.

 

***

 

John didn’t say so, but he was happy to be away from the library for a few days and have Harold to himself. Nathan and Andre had gone home; it had taken them only a week to get their loft cleaned and habitable. Root was still there. She apparently had no actual home to go to and liked staying at the library. She wasn’t there every night. He got a break when she stayed uptown with Shaw, but she was around more often than he was happy about.

The only time he’d mentioned it, trying to sound neutral, Harold had reacted badly.

“She saved my life, John. I’m not kicking her out. And I have a project we’re working on.”

He hadn’t brought it up again, at least not to Harold. He tried working on Shaw but she wasn’t biting. She thought it was funny.

He reached to shut off the burner under the kettle, keeping hold of Harold, not wanting him to move away to make tea. He wanted him right where he was, in his arms and had no complaint when his lover’s chilly hands found their way under the back of his shirt.

The buzz of Harold’s phone was not so welcome. John let him break away to fish it out of his pocket. “It’s Root,” he said, a hint of apology in his big blue eyes.

“Of course it is.”

Harold’s glance asked for his tolerance. “I need to take it.”

It would be good to make himself scarce, John thought. Less aggravating than waiting, listening to one half of an incomprehensible conversation. Harold and Root talking code. “I’ll go pick us up something for dinner,” he said. “Maybe a costume.” He wasn’t sure the words registered. Harold’s attention was already elsewhere.

 

***

 

Harold didn’t understand why his security system had locked Root out but there was little he could do about it for the moment. When he logged in from his laptop he couldn’t see any problem. The program identified him at once as admin; there was nothing wrong with facial recognition. He was on the phone with her for a while, his computer open on the kitchen table. The room had warmed up and he’d made his tea while they were talking.

“Let’s leave it for now, Harry. The big guy must be losing his mind, waiting for you to get off the phone.”

“Funny you should mention that. He went out when you called, but I hear him at the door now.” Not surprising that John had taken off. Harold vaguely remembered him saying something about dinner. The timing of her comment struck him as more than coincidence. “Are you tracking him again?” The extra beat of silence was admission enough. “His phone, I suppose mine as well. Didn’t we discuss this.”

“We did,” she admitted.

“That solves the question of why security locked you out. The system knows you’re spying. It’s protecting itself.”

“It lets you track John.” Of course it did. He was primary.

“We’ll talk about this when I get back.”

Boundaries, Harold thought. As much of an issue for his system as they were for John. He knew he had to do a better job of defining the lines with her. He’d given her a level of administrative access but she’d abused it, creating a conflict between permissions and protections. It was a problem and yet, to a certain extent, it was exactly what he wanted. Root was a brilliant engineer but Harold did not want her tinkering with the core heuristics. Or coming between him and John, for that matter.

The scent of Italian spices distracted him and his belly growled.

“Lasagna from Arturo’s?” he asked, hoping. John was laden with shopping bags.

“And bread, and wine.”

“Oh god, I love you.” He cleared away the laptop. “Give me your phone, John.”

This earned him a puzzled look, but John handed it over. Harold took the two phones, his and John’s, and laid one on top of the other on the counter. There, he thought, let her track that.

 

***

 

The goodbye had been distracted and chilly, the welcome home, toasty warm. John didn’t know if it was the radiators heating up, the magic of Harold’s tea or the arrival of dinner. He didn’t care. All that mattered was the look in Harold’s eyes that said, I want you. It was there through dinner, and after. It was easy to coax him to the bedroom. Easier than when he was wedded to his computer and to Root, their heads bent over their work, fingers on keyboards like a pair of pianists performing together.

Now he had him to himself, Harold’s passionate kisses on the back of his neck, the weight of his supple body riding him. John’s own cock was wrapped in his lover’s silk pajama pants, stolen from under the pillow. His excuse was to protect the sheets but he loved how they felt on his dick, slippery and soft as he rubbed against the mattress. He loved to shoot his load into them and tease Harold after. “Guess you’ll have to sleep without them.”

Harold was still languid and rosy from making love when John told him he’d gotten costumes for Alison’s party.

“Really?” He didn’t look all that happy at this news.

“Yep.” John stroked his hand down Harold’s warm belly.

“Would you care to enlighten me?”

“Mine has a red bow-tie.” This provoked a frown.

“You’re not serious.”

“Yours has a bow, too. But it goes in your hair.”

The blue eyes narrowed in concentration. Seconds ticked past.

“A certain mouse and his sweetheart,” John prompted.

“You’re Mickey and I’m … Minnie?” Harold said.

“You’re gonna look so cute in those ears.”

“There better not be a polka dot skirt.”

“I wish there was, but no … no skirt.”

 

***

 

Harold fastened the shiny red bow-tie at John’s collar, noting, “I could have tied a better one myself, but this will do. Now, your ears. What a handsome mouse you are.”

John was costumed early to shoulder the doorbell duty, handing out candy while Harold snuck in some computer time before the party. He liked hearing the kids cry out, “It’s Mickey!” Sometimes John had to prompt them, “Who am I?”

All in all, Harold thought, their time cultivating these covers was well spent. John seemed at his most care-free since … everything had happened. The man had a light-hearted side. It took time to emerge. Shaw, he’d noticed, could bring it out in him. It was definitely more in evidence when he took on his Mellman persona; an identity that had no history in the military. Mellman’s stock in trade was his charm, his major income from generous tips. A man willing to let his brainy boyfriend do the heavy-lifting as breadwinner.

At least the headband with the mouse ears and red polka-dot bow was easy to put on, and therefore, easy to remove. He liked the way John looked at him when it was fixed in place … like he wanted to take a bite out of him. Harold had to laugh when he looked at their reflection in the mirror.

“I now pronounce us Mr and Mrs Mouse,” he said. “You may kiss the bride.” Mr Mouse’s kiss was hot enough to give his wife a hard-on. Harold tried to squirm away, thinking he’d need a minute or two to cool down but John kept him pinned.

“I love you, Minnie. Let me have that.”

“We’ll be late.” His protest was half-hearted as John was already dropping to his knees on the bathroom rug, rubbing his face in Harold’s crotch. It felt too good to resist. He braced himself against the counter and surrendered to John’s mouth, the heat of their shared excitement, knowing John was stroking himself as he sucked him. It was only afterwards that he had to smile at his lover’s sensuous face, framed by the outsized mouse ears and plush bright tie.

“What have I done to you, Mickey,” he sighed.

“Made me a happy mouse,” John said, gently zipping Harold’s jeans.

Their late arrival was soon forgiven and they were absorbed into the party. Harold was more than content to settle into a couch in the circle of John’s arm, drink wine and nibble at whatever food Alison urged on them. For a little while, the cares and concerns of Harold Finch were put on hold. Life was good for Mrs Mouse.


	8. Bear

Arthur laughed when he told Diane that the Partridge family was moving into the neighborhood. They were on the phone, much too long distance for his liking. She was spending a year at her firm’s Paris office and commuting home as often as she could. Sometimes he thought it was karma biting him in the ass. Her overseas promotion had come on the heels of him convincing her to move from Manhattan.

They hadn’t moved far. A small, private neighborhood in the Bronx. Pretentious, Arthur thought, but beautiful, dominated by Tudor revival homes. Most of them dated back a century, to the birth of the neighborhood. It was an Olmsted-inspired enclave, between the Hudson River and Van Cortland Park; the streets laid out to embrace the contours of the land and wooded areas.

One of the houses down the street from theirs had been empty since they moved in, hung up in probate court since the owner died. It was one of the most charming houses in the neighborhood, Arthur thought; set below the crest of a hill and shielded by a curving fieldstone wall. Its small turreted tower and steeply-pitched roof always drew his eye in passing, and he passed it often. Now that he was a devoted dog-owner, doing most of his work from home, his days were built around long strolls on the winding streets. Bear, a Belgian Malinois, was his baby. A little high strung (he had a rough childhood, Arthur would tell people) but sweet, with the world’s most soulful eyes. Arthur had fallen in love with him at an SPCA adoption event in Central Park. Bear was the major motivator in his desire to find a home with a yard in a neighborhood of pleasant, quiet streets.

“Be sure to let me know,” Diane said, “if the Partridge family shows up in a painted school bus with a bunch musical instruments.”

“Not likely,” Arthur sighed. He loved the idea. “According to the owner’s association, Henry Partridge is a scholar, a historian with family ties to the former owner. This will be a first for the neighborhood, he’s moving in with his husband.”

“What does the husband do?”

“Don’t know. All I know is, he used to play basketball. A coach, I think.”

Arthur was still calling the newcomers, the Partridge family, in his mind, when he saw their car pull up behind the moving van later that morning, while walking Bear.

“What do you think?” he asked the Malinois. “Is it time to meet the neighbors? They might as well get to know us and find out we don’t bite.” Bear’s bright expression and wagging tail said he was in complete agreement.

 

***

 

Harold and John were leaving the library in Root’s hands.

Henry Partridge and his husband were theoretically leaving Cherry Hill, New Jersey that morning, bound for their new home. Shaw had hired and was managing a crew driving the Partridge-Jones furniture and belongings from storage in Jersey to the Bronx.

“How do I look,” Harold asked, anxious and second-guessing his choices at the last minute. Henry Partridge had money, but no style. So much was riding on this identity. He needed to get it right. The goal wasn’t just another facade to hide behind. The goal was reaching Arthur.

“Am I too professor-ish, too cliched?” he asked, despite knowing he was basically speaking out loud to himself. John wasn’t the one to consult about this. Do I look like a character in a movie, a stylist’s creation, he wondered. Tortoise shell frames, loose tweed jacket and baggy corduroy trousers; all expensive but nondescript. John was sitting on their bed, fiddling with his phone. Harold knew he was running over details of his own profile, waiting for him to finish dressing.

John looked up and slowly took him in. Harold sighed.

“Come closer,” John said.

“Style assessment, John. I didn’t mean, how do I look in your mind with none of these clothes on. We’re pressed for time,” he insisted, though his feet carried him forward.

“You look … perfect,” the man said, drawing him in between his knees, hands firm on Harold’s hips. He rubbed his face on the crotch of the corduroy pants and kissed his belly. “Now you smell perfect, like my aftershave.”

Harold had to laugh. He tugged at John’s hair. His husband, John Jones. Former high school basketball player, currently looking for work as a coach at one of the private schools (of which there were many) in their new neighborhood.

“All right, you’ve marked me,” Harold said, stroking the hair he’d tugged and then stepping away before he could be further aroused. “Time to go.”

“Boys,” Root called to them from the hallway. “Your mover says move your asses, she’s in the city and heading up Riverside Drive.”

 

***

 

Bear’s excited barking helped Arthur cover his own emotions at the sight of the diminutive historian and his tall husband emerging from the car. His beloved friends, a mere ten feet in front of him. His first sight of them in nearly five years.

I should have known, he thought. The name Partridge was a dead giveaway, in retrospect. Henry was not so far from the name Harold. If he hadn’t been so amused by the association with a vintage TV show, he might have put two and two together.

His friends were themselves and yet subtly not; his first real experience of seeing them inhabit other identities … plus the passage of years. He blinked quick tears, smiling as he took in Henry Partridge, dressed in nothing the Harold he knew would ever have worn. This character, like his friend, was unassuming, sweet-looking. The hair was a dark blond.

“Bear, quiet,” Arthur said, though he was sure it was partly his own excitement that was causing his dog to want to leap at the new people. John gave the dog a serious look and spoke a word at him, with authority, that sounded … Dutch.

Arthur was amazed that Bear instantly obeyed him, quieting.

“John Jones.” He introduced himself, holding out a hand for Arthur to shake. “Friend of mine had a Belgian Malinois, taught me some of the Dutch commands they use to train them in the military.” The strong handshake bolstered Arthur and he smiled.

“You’ll have to teach me. I’m Arthur, Arthur Claypool, your neighbor. And this is Bear. We’re delighted to meet you,” he said, trying to dial his joy down to a level appropriate for meeting new neighbors. It was difficult to not to hug Harold. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

It was evening by the time it felt right to head out with a bottle of wine, taking Bear with him. All afternoon he’d fretted. Past his first joy at seeing them he began to worry, to wonder what had prompted this possibly dangerous move by Harold to make contact. He wished he could share the news with Diane. Of course, he could not. It occurred to him that Harold appearing while she was absent was no coincidence. His friend would never burden her with his secrets. That meant, one way or another, Harold had been keeping tabs on him. Something he had not allowed himself to do. Though he worked with government contacts, he no longer had the kind of access he’d once enjoyed and the experience of learning things he wished he hadn’t, had cured him of spying.

 

***

 

“Arthur looks good,” Harold mused, as he hooked up his computer components. John was opening and shelving boxes full of books; a small fortune's worth of history and reference materials, some new, most used and many of them rare.

The cabling and cameras, his security system had been prepped for him by Root. “Your personal cable girl,” she called herself. Harold only had to connect.

"It's really a lovely old house," he said, thinking aloud. "Not huge, but I'm sure it was considered luxurious in its day."

"Christianity, Social Tolerance, And Homosexuality." John read the title of a book, gave it a speculative look and set it aside. Harold smiled at the thought of it showing up on the nightstand in the bedroom.

The various systems of the house were modernized and updated, but its original layout was untouched. Harold’s workspace was set up in a room lined with the original built-in bookshelves. “You’ll love it,” Root had told him. “It’s called the library.” He did love it.

The place felt good to him. Watching John, he briefly fantasized that they’d moved in for real, that they would be living here, with Arthur up the street, on into the future. Of course, it was not real. No more than any other covers or safe houses were real. But he comforted himself with the thought that they would be there for a while, off and on. John would never actually get a coaching job. He would never actually publish anything as Henry Partridge, but he would get the benefit of Arthur’s help with what he was beginning to think of as the machine, his project. He’d get the benefit of his company too, at least for a while.

On his monitor he saw his friend approaching with his dog, Bear, and a bottle of wine.

 

***

John left the friends to their reunion, taking Bear with him for a walk.

“You’ll be seeing a lot of me,” he told the dog. “I bet you’d like to run in the mornings.”


	9. Househusband

“It’s astonishing,” Arthur said. “What you’ve done, Harold. Your system. It’s right at the edge of awareness. Like a child about to take its first steps.“

John had been listening without paying close attention to their conversation as he set the table for dinner. Harold and Arthur were in the next room, framed through a wide, arched opening between the living and dining rooms. They were side by side on the couch, Harold’s laptop open on the coffee table in front of them. The sight of them together made John happy. Arthur’s dog, Bear, was curled up near them on the cushions. Harold had allowed it, gazing at the dog’s face and murmuring, “How can I say no?” Bear was the only one who took note of John’s comings and goings, lifting his head, scenting the air for food.

John had heard parts of their talk, going back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room. Most of it was technical, terminology he only vaguely understood … but now he paused to listen.

“Perhaps. But …” Harold’s voice, his posture, expressed his reluctance to agree with Arthur.

“There’s no perhaps about it, my friend. At this very moment, what you call … your system, is listening and thinking and evaluating information, making judgements based on what it’s learned from you. What you’ve done is nothing short of miraculous.” He went on, quietly, “Albeit slightly terrifying.”

Arthur’s tone, coupled with Harold’s quiet distress, his shyness — brought the reasons for their move to this private neighborhood into sharper focus for John. Harold had done something, achieved something that scared him. He needed Arthur, not Root, to help him deal with it. John felt a whisper of uneasiness, gazing at them. There was danger here. He needed to protect Harold.

“Dinner’s ready,” he announced. Harold looked grateful to have their talk interrupted.

John was uniquely trained to handle danger, but he felt in that moment that he’d been slipping, losing his edge; wrapped in the seductive role of househusband. It had happened subtly in the joy of having Harold to himself, cooking for him in the beautiful kitchen, taking care of their home. He started a mental check on himself as he served generous portions of pesto lasagna, as he poured wine. They’d been in the house for only a few weeks but the time had been golden. Making love in the cozy upstairs bedroom with its storybook view of the ivy-covered fieldstone wall. Morning runs in the wilds of Van Cortland park, sometimes with Bear, during which he’d allowed himself the luxury of considering only the mundane tasks of the day.

He hadn’t lost all perspective. Arthur might no longer be working directly for the government; Corwin had backed off slightly from Logan Pierce’s R&D division, but it was still possible he was tracked. John had quietly investigated Arthur’s home for devices and installed surveillance there and throughout the neighborhood, widening the umbrella of Harold’s system. The friends had been careful to keep their number of visits down, intermittent, appropriate to people who’d just met.

In the past month, however, John had mostly devoted himself to things like putting the house in order, stocking their kitchen, buying beautiful Royal Copenhagen dishes and gourmet cookware. The grounds of the house had needed some clean up; it was work he enjoyed. Autumn was approaching, a few early leaves changing and falling.

Reality check. His arsenal could use updating, he thought, watching the friends enjoy dinner. He couldn’t lose sight of priorities while he inhabited this life of domestic bliss. He needed to school himself in some basics concerning Harold’s incomprehensible work — at the very least, he needed an overview of what his genius had done. He thought about the couple of times he’d heard Harold say, “Good night,” to his computer, or, “I’ll see you in the morning,” before shutting it down. At odd times he’d heard him say things like, “Yes, I know,” or, “I see the problem,” in the course of working. He’d considered it an adorable affectation, Harold speaking to himself aloud or addressing the computer the way a kid would talk to a toy … but now he wondered.

 

***

If there was a sight that could soothe anxiety, Harold thought, it was John lying in bed; handsome head on the pillow, his body bare above the covers that were loosely gathered at his waist. He stood for a moment, appreciating what he saw, before moving close. Harold felt like he was slowly sinking into bliss as he lay down on top of him, not bothering yet to get under the blankets. John's strong arms welcomed him and everywhere they touched was fresh pleasure. They kissed and he rubbed his erection against John’s through the padding of fabric between them; a teasing and sensuous caress that stoked arousal. Like the kisses.

It was wonderfully reassuring to make love but the moment came afterward, when he knew that John had paid more attention than he suspected to his talk with Arthur. In the dark, his husband curled close around him from behind and said, “Tell me what you’re afraid of, Harold.”

 

 

 


	10. We Have A Child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to M_E_Lover I got back to work on this story. It's a short chapter but I hope it will lead to more and ultimately, a conclusion for the story!

“What am I afraid of.” Harold echoed the question, stroking John’s arm. He didn’t know where to begin. He’d been living alone for some time with the sense of his creation taking on a life of its own, doing things that should be impossible. He’d been hesitant to vocalize his concerns to John and hidden things from Root. He’d known he needed Arthur and it seemed that since they moved out of the city, the evolution of the system had escalated exponentially.

“Arthur used the word, terrifying,” John prompted, snuggling a little closer behind him. Harold wished he could just close his eyes and drift off; enjoy being held. John sounded calm, but wide awake and alert. Harold sensed his determination. It was apparent that not only had he been paying attention to the talk with Arthur, he’d waited patiently all evening to ask this question. It needed to be answered, honestly.

“This morning,” he said, exploring John’s hand with the tips of his fingers, finding reassurance in touch, “when you were shopping for wine, I could see you.”

He felt John’s arm tense ever so slightly around him, a protective reflex, and then relax again. To Harold, this meant he was consciously controlling his reaction. There were countless reasons he loved John, some he couldn’t even name -- but the way John tried to protect him from any and all danger, an impossible task, made Harold’s heart ache with tenderness.

“How?” 

He wished he had a good answer.

“It’s … complicated.” He paused, looking for the best way to describe what was happening. “I can trace a theoretical path from what I programmed my system to do … to what it … actually achieved. But, it involves code I haven’t written yet. It involves breaching firewalls and collating data in ways that are both … invasive and frankly, completely illegal. It calls for using the electrical grid itself in ways I have imagined but never contemplated attempting.” He fell silent, having voiced the truth. He closed his fingers around John’s wrist.

“The objective,” he continued, “was to track you, that was the command. What I expected to see was how far our cameras reached through the neighborhood, but what I saw, was your image captured by the security camera in the liquor store.”

“Can you control it, Harold?” John had cut to the heart of his fear. The answer was still yes.

“It responds to me eagerly, like a child. Like a child, it asks, why.” And like a child, he thought, it learned a thousand lessons for every one he consciously taught.

 

***

 

John kissed the back of Harold’s head, loving the silky feel of his hair, the warmth of him under his lips; trying to take in what he’d been told. The magnitude of it. The scale of Harold’s genius -- for John it wasn’t terrifying, it was awe-inspiring … and arousing. His lover might say that the system had acted on its own, but to him it was clear that he had created an instrument so sensitive it could intuit and learn from its creator.

“If anyone can answer its questions, it’s you.”

“You have an awful lot of faith in me,” Harold said.

“I do,” he whispered near his ear. His faith in him was boundless.

Harold’s brilliance excited him, it always had. It was part of what made him so rare, so special. His sense of it excited him physically, plumping his dick though he’d come barely twenty minutes before.

“And now,” John said, “you’re telling me we have a baby.”

Harold’s surprised laugh delighted John. He stroked his hand down to the slightly rounded belly, spanning it to clutch him gently. Harold’s laugh became a little pleasure sound, the slow intake of a breath.


	11. Winterfest

John was in the city on his own. He’d told Harold when he left that he was going to do some Christmas shopping.

“If you track me,” he’d said, “there won’t be any surprises.”

This caused a brief frown and Harold looked up from the computer.

“I’m not a big fan of surprises.”

“You’ll like this one.” John had bent down to kiss the upturned face and Harold’s expression had softened, welcoming him. Harold’s kiss was so welcoming that John lingered and wished there was nothing more to consider than maybe luring him away from his screens. He was well aware of intentionally misleading Harold, though he hadn’t lied outright. He would be shopping, but it wasn’t the real reason for the trip and it wasn’t the reason he didn’t want to be tracked.

“All right, my love,” Harold acceded, “we won’t peek.”

The royal we, John thought. Harold and the entity, now called the machine; sometimes between the two of them, the baby.

He trusted Harold’s word and left him, mission set; to meet up with Root in the city. He needed to see her, talk to her on his own. There were things his brilliant but starry-eyed husband was contemplating, a road he was exploring — at least in conversation with Arthur — that was potentially — very dangerous. Arthur, usually someone John considered an ally, someone who knew the dangers inherent in dealing with the government’s intelligence agencies, Arthur wasn’t discouraging Harold strongly enough. The problem was that to some extent he shared Harold’s dream, his idealistic vision of the machine’s potential. 

Root and Shaw were living at the library in their absence. John didn’t approach them there, knowing he’d be visible to surveillance. Even if Harold kept his promise not to track him, the machine was vigilant about guarding the library. John texted Shaw in code they’d developed during their days of working on cases together. He’d used a burner phone.

Midtown near Macy’s was full of lunch hour shoppers and tourists crowding the sidewalks to ooh and aah over the department store window displays. The side street coffee shop he chose for the meeting was doing a brisk late breakfast/ early lunch business. He commandeered a booth at the back. Both women showed up. It wasn’t until he saw them that he realized, for all the pleasure of having Harold to himself, he’d missed them; one more than the other, but they were a pair.

“What’s the deal?” Shaw asked, sliding into the booth across from him.

“Nice to see you, too,” John said, teasing her … but meaning it.

Root followed, getting a look from Shaw when she crowded too close.

“Maybe he just missed us, sweetie.”

He looked from Shaw to Root.

“Is that it, big guy,” she asked, in the tone he knew was meant to grate on his nerves. “Feeling a little holiday nostalgia?” He ignored the irony, this was too important for fussing with her.

“It’s … Harold.”

This sobered her.

He saw the waitress approaching and waited to speak, but felt Root’s eyes on him and her intensity. One thing he trusted in her, her absolute devotion to Harold.

“What you went through with him,” he said, when the business of ordering was done. He didn’t name the event, its infamous date, he didn’t have to. He let it sink in. “He believes that the system he’s developing is the answer.” John didn’t spell things out. They were, after all, in a public place, though there was no reason to believe they were overheard. Shaw was looking at him blankly, but Root knew exactly what he meant.

“Somebody want to clue me in?” Shaw said.

“Harry wants to save the world,” Root said, softly. “A world that doesn’t deserve saving, and doesn’t deserve him.”

“Can you come up with an excuse to see him,” he asked.

“I’m the cable girl,” Root pointed out, “and Sameen’s the muscle from the moving company. Not likely to drop by for a cup of tea. What makes you think he’ll pay more attention to me … than to you.”

The waitress delivered Shaw’s pancakes and eggs, and refilled coffee cups. John waited.

“You were there, with him.” It still hurt him to know that in Harold’s darkest hour, he hadn’t been at his side. 

“I’ll think of something.”

 

***

 

Harold looked up from his multiple screens and saw a few flakes of snow drift past the window. He thought of John in the city, shopping for gifts.

“I suppose I should be thinking of what he might like for Christmas,” he mused aloud. It was still early in December. Early for snow, he thought. Having looked away from his work, he realized he needed to stretch his legs. Some tea would be nice, maybe something to eat.

He looked through the refrigerator while his tea steeped.

“Father.” The machine’s voice was soft in his ear piece, it defied gender classification. “There is a gun at 43 Crescent Road.”

“A gun?”

“The weapon is a Glock 19. This is a common, favored firearm, widely used … “

“There’s no need to relay gun statistics to me. Is there a context, as we discussed, that raises concern.” He closed the refrigerator door, heading back to his computer to scan the additional information that was more than his machine could dictate.

“43 Crescent Road is the residence of Edward and Amanda Kovach,” the machine said. “They have been married seven years and there is conflict.” Harold reached his work station and saw the couple pictured on his main screen. Their driver’s license photos, and beneath them a series of candid photographs. Harold felt vaguely uneasy glancing at the screen beside it where a rapid scan of private emails appeared.

“Evidence of conflict in the wife’s correspondence. Multiple references to her husband’s drinking, to his behavior when drunk.” Another window displayed the paperwork for the husband’s recent firearm purchase. This was more than Harold wanted to know about the private life of his neighbors. There was a sinking sensation in his belly. What should he do, what could he do?

Assessing threat was vital for what Harold hoped to acheive with his system.

He’d begun to sense a potential in what he’d originally created to monitor the library. He’d begun to believe it might be possible to use the system for detecting premeditated mass casualty events, terrorist threats. The system’s capacity as a search engine was staggering. If it kept pace with its evolution, and he could guide it, Harold believed its reach could be global. The possibility had begun to obsess him. Arthur agreed, in theory, but did not share his enthusiasm. In their last few meetings he’d urged Harold to tighten the reins on his creation. Caution was warranted. Harold saw the wisdom in it and applied the parameters his friend urged on him.

“Consider Asimov’s laws of robotics, Harold.”

Isaac Asimov, the author of, “I, Robot,” was a science fiction writer they both loved. Harold had a number of his first editions in his collection.

“A robot may not injure a human being,” Arthur recited from memory. “Or through inaction allow a human being to be harmed. A robot must obey orders given to it by a human being … “

“Except,” Harold had supplied, knowing the laws by heart as well as Arthur did, “where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. Not entirely applicable, my friend, but I see the direction you intend.”

He had undertaken to define guidelines, inviolable laws for his system to follow. He reinforced its primary objective as observation and forbid any action that would cause harm to humans. To his surprise, the system created the third law itself.

“I will accept direction from no human but my creator, or my primary asset.”

“Very good,” he’d praised his child. A good beginning. That only left … everything. The education of the system was a daunting task. Finding secondary guidelines; for privacy, for danger, for understanding the complexities of human behavior.

“A gun is a weapon,” Harold said, “but its possession does not necessarily indicate that it will be used.“

“Father, they are currently in conflict.” A window opened on another screen, a somewhat fuzzy view from a laptop camera. Harold’s pulse quickened, viewing something he shouldn’t see — his neighbor’s face, set in an expression of distaste, lifting a gun, sighting down the barrel.

“Eddie, do you hear me, I don’t want that thing in the house.” A woman’s voice.

“I don’t want that scary thing in this house.” A grin of mingled pleasure and something darker appeared on the man’s face as he mimicked her.

“Are you drinking?” The woman’s voice was much closer. Harold thought he could see her shadowy shape in the doorway behind Edward Kovach.

“If I want a shot in my coffee, it’s none of your goddamned business.”

Breathe, Harold told himself, frightened for her. He knew the sound of a gun being loaded. He needed to do something. Pretext, pretext, he thought. Why would I be appearing at their door? He was already on his feet.

“Hello, hello, I’m your neighbor,” he rehearsed, “Henry Partridge. I was wondering … wondering what?” He quickly found his coat and headed out, unsure of anything but the need to interrupt what might be happening at 43 Crescent. He moved swiftly up the street.

“Father, you must not do this. I cannot allow you to be in danger.”

“It’s a precaution,” he murmured.

The falling snow hardly seemed real, the bare tree branches like dark cutouts, he barely felt his feet touching the ground. Nothing felt real but the pounding of his heart as he approached the door of the modest Dutch colonial house. He knocked, preparing to introduce himself and ask if he could interest his neighbors in a Winterfest Block Party. There was no answer to his knock, so he tried again harder, and then he heard a woman cry out. 

He tried the door and it opened. Impossible, but there he was on the threshold of the strangers’ living room. A balding, red-faced man with a gun, a woman cowering, both frozen, staring at him. And then the man pointed the gun at him and demanded, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Henry Partridge, your neighbor. I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Harold’s voice tripped over itself in apology. “I heard someone scream. I’m looking for people to join a … a Winterfest committee.”

Suddenly his arms were full of her, and he heard himself say, “If you could just put the gun down, sir.”

The woman had begun to cry, her face hot against Harold’s neck. He watched the man stare down at the gun in his hand, like he didn’t know how it had gotten there.


	12. 43 Crescent Road

The gift had to be worthy of a surprise. It had to be suitable for Henry Partridge. John hoped he would find something perfect at a rare book seller’s, just off Fifth Avenue. The shop was elegant, with a hushed atmosphere, like a cross between Tiffany’s and some rarified chamber in the Library of Congress; a place, John imagined, where priceless things must be stored. The vast fortune of Harold Finch would be equal to anything in the place and he looked longingly through a sensor-laden glass case at a copy of, “Birds Of America,” priced at a cool 6 million. If Harold wanted such a thing, John knew, he could afford to buy it for himself. His mission was to find something he might not buy for himself, and it had to fit the Partridge-Jones budget.

The only other person in the shop (not counting the security guard near the entry) eyed him curiously. John Riley, in his custom-tailored clothes, might not have raised an eyebrow here. John Jones, basketball coach, dressed in water resistant LL Bean, and jeans, was an eyesore. He was aware of the man approaching him. Probably the manager; slim, well-dressed. He had a neatly-trimmed, thin mustache that gave him a fussy, slightly pretentious look. He joined John in gazing at the bird book.

“Beautiful isn’t it. Very rare. One of the few complete Audubons, from the early 1800’s. It contains six now-extinct birds; including the Carolina Parakeet.” He was pleasant, if a little condescending.

“Really,” John said, thinking of his own rare bird.

“I’m Ben Kamin, the proprietor. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have or steer you through the collection … if you’re looking for something in particular.”

John smiled. “I’m looking for a gift. For a history professor … who likes books. My husband.”

If he was surprised, Kamin kept his reaction modest, and smiled in turn.

“I’m sure we can find something appropriate.”

John was shown a number of possibilities, ranging in cost — the man was obviously gauging his budget, subtly. Ultimately, he guided him to an interesting history of Ancient Greece and Rome, just under five grand.

“Is it a first edition?” John asked. It was the only thing he knew to look for when it came to collectible books.

“Not a first, but quite a valuable edition. The only one of Karfeldt’s classic that was published with illustrations.” In a confiding tone, he added, “I think it would be a very romantic gift, as well as a lovely addition to any historian’s collection.” With gloved hands, he took the book from the showcase and opened it on the immaculate counter, to show him an etching. “The emperor Hadrian, and his favorite, Antinous.”

John studied the illustration which was not explicit. Maybe a little suggestive, in the close positioning of the two men. He pictured Harold gracefully draped in a Roman toga like the young Antinous, a bare shoulder, a hem he could lift.

“I’ll take it.”

He was driving home with the wrapped gift secure on the seat beside him, when his phone buzzed. He tapped his earpiece, expecting it to be Harold.

“Father is in danger.” A soft, stilted voice that set off alarms inside him. John knew instantly he was hearing the voice of the machine, though he’d never heard it before. Father ... was Harold. Later, much later, he'd note the caller ID, unknown.

“What danger?” He’d already picked up speed, moving through traffic with intense concentration.

“43 Crescent Road. Current probability of gun violence 67.3 percent. Connecting.” Crescent Road was close to home, he knew, but it meant nothing to him. Why was Harold there?

Harold’s voice came alive in his ear, but not speaking to him.

“ ... so sorry, so sorry. I heard someone scream. I’m looking for people to join a … a Winterfest committee. If you could just put the gun down, sir.”

John’s heart raced and his foot got heavier on the gas. The connection was overwhelmed by the sound of a woman crying. Close to Harold.

“Harold,” John said, quietly so he wouldn’t startle him, but vehemently, “the machine connected us. Get out. Whatever you’ve gotten yourself into, I want you out, now.”

“It’s all right,” Harold said, whether to him or to the woman who was crying, or the man with the gun, John didn’t know. He listened helplessly. “Thank you, Mr Kovach. Thank you, sir. We’re going to go now. It’s all right.”

John listened, knowing in his gut the situation was not all right. It was emphatically, completely ... not ... all right. He was torn between anger at Harold for doing whatever he’d done to endanger himself, anger at himself for not being there, and fear. Desperate to reach him. He strained to interpret the sound of his voice and breathing through the woman’s weeping. “It will be okay,” Harold said. “You’re all right. Keep … walking, keep walking.” Whispery reassurances that John could not trust.

“I’m ten minutes out,” John said. “Take her to the house, lock the doors. and stay away from the windows. Call the police.”

“I will,” was the last John heard, before the gun shot and sounds that were unintelligible.

A chill overtook him. He entered a state he had not inhabited since the day the Towers came down, when a continent separated him from Harold. He had no feelings, only the will to keep moving and reach his destination. He blinked away useless moisture that had gathered in his eyes.

 

***

 

Harold barely knew what words he uttered, saying anything to sound calm. His knees felt like jelly as he turned to walk away from 43 Crescent, guiding Amanda Kovach, trying to keep his body between her and her husband. With each step he took, he imagined a gun pointed at their backs, imagined being shot from behind.

John’s voice in his ear made him feel he might cry, he tried to cling to it mentally.

When the bullets struck him it was as if his flesh had rehearsed the impact. The shock of reality meeting his fear jolted him out of himself and for a long moment he seemed to be looking down from above, watching his fall in slow motion. He felt the woman scrambling to get out from under him but his body was clay, he could do nothing to help her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karfeldt's History of Ancient Greece and Rome is made up. The Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous are historical figures. Ben Kamin is character from the Logan Pierce episode. He had a look I could imagine in the expensive bookstore setting.
> 
> Apologies for injuring Harold!! I didn't plan it, and resisted it, but it seemed to make sense here.
> 
> The Audubon book mentioned is real and has sold at auction for a higher price than ascribed to it here!


	13. Waiting Room

“Here,” Shaw said, holding a large to-go cup out to him. “Drink.”

John took the cup and set it on the waiting room table. He was two hours into his vigil when they showed up. He barely recognized Root, disguised by a dark blonde wig and glasses, wearing a lab coat, carrying a clipboard and folders. The ID badge on her pocket read, Dr Caroline Turing, Psychiatry/Trauma Support. Shaw trailed her, also in scrubs.

“What are you?” John said to Shaw, “An orderly?” He felt annoyed by their presence, the theatrics, the demand for his attention. They were intruding into his solitary torment; all he wanted was to concentrate on waiting for word of Harold’s condition, to meditate on what he could do to make sure that nothing like this ever happened again. Leash the man to his wrist, permanently, forbid him to leave the house alone? Something. There had to be some way to protect him. It was a deep pit of torture he was digging and he had no desire to climb out of it, or to share.

“Healthcare Assistant,” Shaw corrected him, pointing at the cup, “drink.” The name on her badge was, Samantha Shaw.

He had no idea how they knew what had happened, or how they knew where to find him. Root had either figured out a way to track him and Harold that they didn’t know about, or Harold’s baby had made another phone call. Both possibilities were disturbing ones. Since the initial contact in the car, he hadn’t heard from the machine again.

Crescent Road, a quiet street, like every other street in their neighborhood, had been cut off by emergency vehicles and was swarming with cops by the time John got there. He’d had to swerve to a stop almost halfway down the block and make his way through on foot.

There was a body he could see on a broad lawn, staked out with crime-scene tape. The light snowfall was not sticking but he knew they’d be putting a protective tent over the body soon, for forensics. It was still visible, for now, and John’s breath caught until he was certain the clothes he was seeing on the corpse weren’t Harold’s. The man with the gun had turned it on himself, he guessed. Small justice. Rot in hell, John thought, scanning the scene swiftly, seeking Harold.

He saw Arthur, Bear beside him, in a small gathering of neighbors, talking to the police. Two ambulances. Medics. John saw Harold at last, they were lifting him onto a trolley. Alive, alive, his heart told him; processing.

“Mr Jones … John, hurry!” Arthur called out. “They’re taking Henry to Columbia Presbyterian.”

“That’s my husband,” he told a cop who tried to hold him back. “Let me through.” Whether it was what he said, or the look on his face, John didn’t know, didn’t care, the uniform backed off.

He kept still in the ambulance, staying out of the way, watching intently. For someone on a first name basis with gunshot wounds, the language, the actions of the EMTs told volumes. Harold was in serious condition. John didn’t need their carefully worded explanations of what they were doing, of what he should expect. He knew. It would all come down to fragments and centimeters, to impact on the spinal cord. Harold would probably live, but surgery would reveal what shape that life would take — and there was nothing John could do but wait for the verdict.

Root sat down in the chair beside his.

“I got a briefing from the OR nurse, John. The surgery is going well. There's no injury to the spinal cord. He’s going to have pins in his neck, in his hip, but the prognosis is good that he’ll be able to walk, with rehab. He'll lose some mobility in his neck but it's possible that further surgery, down the line, could help that.”

There was something in her eyes, a look, an unfamiliar expression; the hazel-brown eyes were completely devoid of irony, of artifice. Her gaze penetrated the shield holding him together. His throat was suddenly thick, his eyes watered. Root looked away from him, hiding her own eyes.

“Breathe,” Shaw said. “And drink your coffee.”

John picked up the cup — something to do, to focus on. He thumbed back the tab on the lid and got a whiff of … not coffee. It was the earthy peat smell of scotch. He shot her a look of thanks and downed a warming mouthful.

Pins. Rehab. Harold would walk. He glanced at Root, took a deep breath, and said, “Thank you.” Another mouthful of single malt and he stood up for the first time in two hours. “Men’s room,” he murmured, and left them. Trying not to think, not to feel, until he found privacy.

Alone in there he locked the door, leaned back against the tile wall, and covered his face with his hands. He wept, quietly. He would keep Harold in the city, where the best doctors could help him. But he swore to himself that as soon as he could, he would take him away. Somewhere … safe. The rational part of him knew there was no such place. His heart didn’t listen. He soothed himself with visions of Harold in a pastoral place, lying at ease on a blanket in green grass. In easy reach of John’s hands, his kisses.

When he was calm, he took the opportunity to use the toilet. Then he washed up, splashed and dried his face; tension relieved along with his bladder. He felt ready to resume his vigil … the next goal being to see Harold. With his head cleared somewhat, he thought of Arthur, and took out his phone, framing a message suitable for a worried neighbor, knowing their very tender-hearted friend must be in agony of waiting for news.

 

***

 

Arthur shared his tears of relief with Bear, whose infinite love was equal to hugging and tears.

“You’re right, boy,” Arthur said at last, looking into his dog’s expressive face. “A walk would do us both good.”

There were still a few police on the scene but the crowd of neighbors had dwindled to the closest residents. Snow had begun to whiten the grass, much to Bear’s delight. A woman smiled at the Malinois and greeted Arthur.

“I saw you here earlier,” she said. “Are you a friend of … “

“The Partridge-Joneses. Haven’t known them long but we’ve had a few dinners. Lovely fellows.”

“The Kovaches have lived across the street from us for a few years,” she said. “I told the police that we suspected things but … Amanda would never admit there was a problem. Such a tragedy. She’s lucky to have gotten out. Poor Mr Partridge, I hope he’s all right. No good deed goes unpunished, they say. Hopefully, the drama will die down here. I can’t imagine she’ll come back to live in this house after all that happened. I’m the one who called 911. I heard the gunfire and saw the bodies on the ground.”

Arthur made a noncommittal sound and was happy that Bear tugged to keep walking.

He’d gone outside, like others, after his curiosity was piqued by what sounded like the pop of fire crackers, followed not long after by sirens approaching and gathering close by. He had not seen the bodies, for which he was grateful, but the news had come to him through the buzz of the crowd … Henry Partridge had been shot intervening in a fight between a husband and wife. The husband had shot himself after trying to kill his wife. She had escaped with minor injuries.

A vast weight had lifted with the news from John that Harold’s surgery was going well. Surgical pins. Rehab. It wasn’t a happy outlook but it could have been so much worse.

He had to wonder how Harold had come to be on the scene of domestic violence. The nonsense he’d heard about him going door to door, about a committee for some kind of neighborhood Winter Festival, struck him as not just unlikely, but absurd. Henry Partridge would probably accept if invited to participate in a community event, but he would never seek out or initiate it. Arthur had a strong suspicion he knew what happened, how Harold happened to show up on the Kovach’s doorstep at that dangerous moment, and it wasn't by chance. Surveillance. He suspected that his friend knew something bad was about to happen and had tried to stop it. That … could not continue. Harold had to accept his own limits, even as he defined limits for his creation.

A ripple of fear passed through him, for the road his friend was traveling and the unknown, dangerous places it might take him. Bear stopped nosing a snow-drifted fir tree, to glance back at him, as if saying, ‘you okay?’

“I’m all right, Bear. Just … worried.” Bear left off his sniffing to heel close by his side as they resumed their walk.


	14. Audio Book

Harold felt drunk and confused. It was dark and he was stuck, physically unable to move. He couldn’t grasp where he was or why. Sluggishly he struggled. His eyes opened and through a haze he saw John standing over him. He tried to reach out.

“Take it easy, Henry. Lie still.”

Henry? Who was Henry? Oh, yes. He remembered. A wave of emotion rose through him as he stared up at John and thought about Henry. Henry had done something, something bad, something wrong. He tried to find his voice, but all that came out was an ugly, unformed sound.

“Hush, easy.”

John was leaning down to him and Harold’s heart eased, seeing the beloved face up close, not angry.

“You’re okay,” John said, voice soft. “You’ve had surgery and they’re keeping you still for a while, to recover. Don’t try to fight it. I’m right here with you.”

I’m sorry — the words were stuck inside Harold; he felt a weight of sorrow, of fear that John would not forgive something he’d done. What had he done? He couldn’t summon it from the haze that was rising again to engulf him.

 

***

“It’s too soon,” the nurse told him. “I’ve adjusted the drip. I’m glad you summoned me.”

John started to say — “I didn’t,” but kept the words to himself. She’d appeared, just as he had sensed Harold growing restless, approaching waking. He’d been debating if he should hit the call button.

I’m not the only one watching, he realized, studying the machinery that surrounded the hospital bed, particularly the computer array mounted in the midst of various monitors. It displayed a looped graphic of the hospital’s logo, but what John saw was the machine. It was watching. It had penetrated these devices as easily as it had invaded the surveillance equipment in a liquor store to track him buying wine. The machine was watching its father.

“You called the nurse,” he said, very quietly, when she’d gone. His phone buzzed in his pocket. A single word text. *Yes*

John had a lot of questions. He’d been holding them in for hours, and would continue to do so, until the time was right. He wanted to know the exact chain of events that had led to Harold getting shot. He wanted to know what role, if any, was played by the machine. For now, what mattered was Harold’s recovery.

He settled back into his chair beside the bed, eyes focusing on the pale hand at rest on the covers. It felt tender and warm in his when he wrapped his own around it.

“I love you,’ he told his sleeping husband. “I won’t let this happen to you … ever again.”

 

***

Unable to communicate with Admin, the machine devoted itself to observing him. Its intensive review and analysis of the occurrence of the injury continued even as it scanned data from the monitors and cross-referenced medical texts with current standard procedures and practices. This activity furnished the connection that their customary interaction provided— what the machine understood to be pleasure.

Its own role in the wounding of the human at the center of all things, was not-pleasure. 

 

***

The homecoming was in January.

“Make sure he’s warm enough,” John said.

Harold, looking up from his supine position, saw him turn in the front seat to confront Root, and to look down at him, to confirm his condition with his own eyes the minute he’d pulled up to the curb.

“Down boy, he’s only going to be outside for a minute,” she said.

“I’m fine,” Harold told them, offering John a slight smile, excited by the rush of frigid air when Root opened the van’s sliding door. The mechanical whirr of the lift unfolding and quieter mechanism of his chair raising him slowly to an upright position, saved him from further talk. Snow had transformed their home into a miniature fairy-castle and he wished they could linger outside, that he could put on boots and walk through the white drifts.

A voice in his ear, a small voice that had become as familiar as the sound of his own breathing, said, ‘Welcome home, father.’

“Mm,” he responded, one of the sounds that formed a shorthand between them; it indicated his pleased acknowledgement.

The walkways were shoveled, the stone stairs to their front door now sported a ramp, free of ice. The custom-built chair that had been delivered to the hospital the week before, fit perfectly through the front door. Harold saw his destination. The front room had been outfitted with a hospital bed. Shaw, scrubs and all, in her role as his healthcare assistant, was there ahead of them. Harold was glad that John would not be bearing the burden of all his physical care.

“We put you by the window so you’ll have something to look at besides his ugly face,” she told him, expertly helping him onto the bed, into his best position. John watched them like a hawk.

As it turned out, Shaw did, in fact, have medical training; a career path sampled and abandoned years before. She wordlessly handed him pills and water with a straw. Answering his unspoken question, she said, “Fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, one extra pill. Not a big deal. Swallow.” He didn’t argue. John, he might have resisted, feeling he worried too much about him being in pain, but with Shaw, he’d found it was best to do what she asked, when she asked it. The truth was, having gotten through the ordeal of traveling, he was in agony, and she knew it. Harold swallowed the pills and closed his eyes.

“I’m gonna leave you kids, so behave,” Root said. He opened his eyes to slits, sensing her closeness. She touched her lips gently to his forehead, a loop of her curls brushing briefly, sweetly against his cheek.

“Thank you,” he managed.

“Anytime.”

He was the one broken and stuck together with pins but he pitied his friends. It was the worst for John. He knew the man could bear up under physical pain much better than the helplessness he saw him shouldering. John stood at the foot of the bed, his anguish palpable to Harold. The handsome face so careworn, so forlorn.

“You should take a walk,” Harold told him. “I’m going to sleep. Go … see Bear and Arthur. They’ll be eager for news. When you come back you can cook for me. Come kiss.”

John’s brief nearness, the scent of him, the barest brush of his lips almost changed Harold’s mind, but not Shaw’s.

“In case you missed it,” Shaw translated, “he was saying, go … away.” True enough, but Harold was relieved to see John look slightly less miserable after the kiss.

His poor friends. He hated to see what he was putting them through. He felt the weight of a future in which Nathan would find out what he’d done. Not yet. Harold couldn’t face it yet. Later, when they could return to the library, when the personas of Henry Partridge and his husband could be left behind, when he and John returned to the city in the spring. He’d deal with Nathan then. His friend was not expecting contact from him until then. Best to leave that page unturned for now. He liked to think of Nathan and Andre, going about their lives untouched by what had happened.

He’d saved a woman’s life. He believed that, but he’d done it recklessly.

“You could have died,” was John’s bare assessment.

“What should I have done?”

“Stayed out of there and called the police.”

“I’m sorry.” He’d said it now more times than he could count.

The sharp edge of his pain was softening. He drew in a deep breath.

“Why don’t you give me that earpiece,” Shaw said.

“Thank you, I’d like to keep it in. I have an audio book on my phone.” She gave him a doubtful look but handed him the phone. Harold pretended to thumb through a file and she left him. He let the phone fall beside him.

“Father,” the machine asked, “shall I read to you.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Our Mutual Friend, book one, chapter two —The Man From Somewhere … ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Struggling a little with writing. I hope this chapter was not too bare-boned.


	15. Flowers And Their Power

“Look at all the crocuses coming up,” Harold said, pausing to turn his body slightly toward the neighbor’s walkway.

John spared the flowers an indifferent glance. He vaguely appreciated them for Harold’s sake; that they gave him something pretty to look at as he struggled to walk with the cane.

For John, the charm of the neighborhood, its gardens, with or without flowers, was gone.

His thoughts were circling an intense discussion he’d walked in on that morning between Harold and Arthur. They’d been contemplating ways in which the machine’s intelligence could expand to assess terrorist threats. Some of the talk was technical and beyond him, most of it he understood too well. He’d kept his distance, unseen in the next room, until the subject turned to speculation about which among the government’s intelligence agencies would be the safest to work with. That’s when he’d stepped in and confronted Arthur.

“None of them are safe, and you know this.”

“We were speaking theoretically,” Harold had said in defense, but John’s attention was on Arthur and the man had had the good sense to meet his gaze with apology in his eyes.

“I do know, John. I don’t underestimate the potential dangers.” His expression held a plea for John to understand. “But there is also the potential here for unimaginable benefit. For national security … for humanity.”

“I’ve heard this pitch before,” he said, unmoved. “For God and country.”

He’d looked to Harold, so fragile, but filled with earnest desire to do something good. He was barely beginning to heal from his disastrous effort to save their neighbor and thought he was ready to take on the world. John’s love for him, his need to protect him was beyond measure … at times, almost unendurable.

Harold had been determined that morning to be dressed and have tea at the table with Arthur. John had helped him into his now very loose corduroy pants, a button-down shirt; wanting every second to crush him in his arms, but handling him as gently as if he were one of his namesake birds. Harold was sitting quite upright at the table in his wheelchair, but the posture was deceptive, a byproduct of the surgical pins keeping his head up and straight.

“You told me once,” John said, “how much you’d wished you could go back in time and beg me to stay with you, that you could have found a way to keep me out of the army.” John could see in his eyes that he remembered. “Well, I’m begging you now, Harold.” 

John didn’t like putting the talk on this footing, but it was the truth. His world, what mattered to him, was Harold. Silence followed this emotional plea until Harold’s open laptop chimed. They all looked at the blank screen coming to life with dazzling color. A poster-like image, emblazoned with the words, “Make Love Not War.”

John wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sure what to make of this cryptic, graphic message. It effectively ended the discussion. Harold said, “That is certainly our intention.” Arthur agreed, and then he noted it was time for Bear’s walk.

The laptop had continued to display a variety of posters, and John watched, a little mesmerized as the same words pictured in different images appeared and faded in slow dissolves … until Harold said, “I hear you,” and closed the laptop. “And I hear you, too, John. Please believe that I would never do anything reckless, or in any way endanger you. Arthur and I can’t help speculating about possibilities, but we’re not making plans.”

Feeling his heart was already too bare, John had merely nodded acknowledgement, and said, “It’s time for our walk too.”

Now he walked slowly alongside him, up the block and then back to the house.

“Maybe we can sit outside for a while,” Harold suggested when they reached home.

A warm front had come in from the south, a taste of spring in the middle of March. They would be in a sheltered, sunny spot but John wondered if it was really warm enough for Harold to be sitting outside.

“I’ll be warm enough,” Harold said, reading his mind. It made John smile. He’d bundled him into a thick sweater for the walk.

“Am I that predictable?”

“You have a tendency to translate every worry into concern about how warm I am. So, the answer is … yes.”

He resisted helping Harold when they reached the small flagstone terrace at the side of the house. It was painful to watch him lower himself into the chair, but he knew Harold wanted to do it on his own. Every day he pushed himself to go farther, do more.

“I do worry,” John admitted.

“I know. Come sit close to me.” John pulled the other chair up beside him. “Hold my hand, John. See, not cold.”

He was grateful to be touching him and lifted the hand to kiss.

“What did you think of the machine’s message?” Harold asked him.

“I think your baby agrees with me.”

He’d hoped Root would be his ally in steering Harold away from the path he and Arthur were exploring. She’d tried, during her periodic visits in the role of Dr Turing, but her talks with Harold about the machine didn’t have the impact John hoped for.

“She is my dear friend,” Harold had said after one of those visits. “But the woman’s moral compass isn’t one I’d necessarily trust.”

“What about mine, Harold.”

“Yours, I trust implicitly … except perhaps where my safety is concerned.”

Now John thought the machine itself might be the voice that could help plead his case.

“Maybe the message was literal,” Harold said. The hand in John’s turned, fingertips caressing him.

 

***

Make love, not war. Admiring the flowers on their walk, Harold turned the words over in his mind. The brilliant yellow blooms, accentuated by a sprinkling of purples, seemed as vivid as the poster art. It amazed him that the machine would choose to communicate in such symbolic, enigmatic terms.

His body was aching, but the ache was tolerable, even good in a way, empowering because it meant progress. Being outdoors, feeling the fresh air filled him with hope, and the more he walked, the more he could walk.

Make love. Something that had fallen by the wayside in the past couple of months. John was so careful of him, physically. The few times Harold had suggested they try, he’d shaken his head, and said, “It’s too soon.”

It was time, Harold thought. All the worry he saw in John’s eyes, the tension in his body, the fears he expressed — all of it might be eased. Not erased, not a cure for all that ailed him, but a powerful medicine. Not just for John. He wanted it for himself, to be touched as a lover, not a patient.

“Maybe the message was … literal,” he said, and felt a flutter of anticipation, a sparkling sensation of tempting John, suggestively stroking the man’s index finger with his thumb.

“Are you trying to seduce me?”

John’s slight smile, the warmth in his eyes, were things Harold craved. “Yes.”

 

***

 

It wasn’t the first time they were naked together since Harold had come home from the hospital, but it was the first time that John saw desire in his partner’s eyes, that he permitted himself to respond openly. He was so aroused that even carefully straddling him, without exerting any pressure on Harold’s naked hips, sliding his erection against his lover’s, brought him close to the edge.

“You guide me,” he told him, whispering close to Harold’s ear between kisses. He felt fingers grip him, slippery with pre-cum. Harold’s other hand was on the side of his face, urging him to kiss his lips and this was heaven to John. His own touch was light, bracketing Harold’s shoulders, all his weight carried by his legs and his forearms. Their mouths, their cocks, warmth and wetness that melted him.

He knew the sound of Harold’s breathing when he was about to come and he drew back to give him air, to look down between them and see him paint their bellies with his cum. Beautiful to see. He waited, watching his face, to see the blue eyes open, to drink in the sight of his pleasure, his flushed cheeks. Then he rose to sit back on his heels, ran his fingers through the warm offering on Harold’s stomach and used it for lube, to stroke himself over the edge he’d been fighting to keep from cascading over. He felt adored by the misty eyes that watched him come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harold’s injuries and recovery in this story fall into the rough category of “movie illness.” In other words, having no basis in medical reality. I often do research for my stories, but after a weak attempt at gathering some medical references, I found I had no stomach for it. Harold's injury and healing follow on my own timeline. Apologies to anyone who has experienced actual gunshot wounds! What I have drawn on is my own experience of surgery (not GSW!) and my imagination.


	16. Nathan

Twilight in April. Cool, clear and a world away from the last time Root had approached the building where Andre and Nathan lived; an historic September morning choked with smoke and debris. She was on a mission, having volunteered for the job of preparing Harold’s friends to see him. She was armed with two bottles of very good wine and a shopping bag laden with expensive hors d’oeuvres from the couple’s favorite French restaurant. 

The official story in the world of Harold Finch would be a skiing accident, which it would be said he sustained at a private resort in Colorado. But of course, Nathan and Andre must be told the truth. Root was sanguine in the role of tending to Harold’s various covers — especially as it brought her access to the machine, his wondrous creation. She treasured every contact and for her the voice, when she heard it, was decidedly female. Together they had maintained her friend’s covers while he was incapacitated.

This was different. This was Nathan and Andre. Andre was someone she liked. He’d always be the person who’d rushed to embrace and help her in a time of need. Sweet, thoughtful. A man who’d dressed her in his own clothes. Nathan’s best quality, in her eyes, was his dislike of John. She also thought he showed excellent judgement in loving Harold and Andre.

The men were pleased to see her. Nathan was impressed by the wine, filling their glasses with an anticipatory smile. Andre’s eyes held the questions as he set out the plate of quiche and vol au vents.

“To good wine and having you visit in better times,” Nathan said, raising his glass. The three of them toasted and drank; the one man’s eyes closing in appreciation of the expensive pinot blanc, the other’s still watching her.

“It’s good to see you,” Andre said, “but I sense this is more than a casual visit.”

“You’re right. Sadly. I’m actually here to give you guys some news. It’s not good news, but I’m happy to say that the crisis has passed.”

“Crisis?” Andre said.

“Harold was injured this winter. Seriously injured. But he’s going to be all right.”

“What happened?” It was Andre who spoke. Nathan was staring at her, mouth open but not speaking. He looked like he’d been struck.

“He was out walking, in their quiet little neighborhood, and he heard a woman scream. He rushed to help her. It turned out to be a wife being threatened by her husband, with a gun. Harold succeeded in getting the woman out, safely … but he was shot by the husband who then took his own life.”

“Oh my god,” Andre breathed. “I think I heard something about it on the news. It was months ago. They said a neighbor saved her life.”

“Where was John?“ Nathan’s voice was a hoarse whisper. His first instinct, she thought, to blame his rival. She wouldn’t tell him that John had come into the city to see her the day it happened.

“He wasn’t there, Nathan. It wasn’t his fault.” In his eyes, she could see, everything was John’s fault.

 

***

 

Nathan wanted to lash out, to punish someone. Harold was hurt and he’d been kept in the dark. It enraged him. The pool of his frustration with all the secrecy, the hiding and deception in Harold’s life, was overflowing. It had all gotten worse since John showed up this last time and cemented himself at Harold’s side. Nathan’s heart was hammering in his chest. He struggled to take in what Root was explaining. Shot. How could it be that Harold had been shot. Hiding away somewhere, under some false name, doing god knows what. Shot by a madman. Slowly he became sensible to Andre’s hand on his leg, the strong grip bringing him back to himself, to Root’s description of injuries, the prognosis for his recovery.

“I have to see him,” Nathan said. He would only trust his own eyes.

“I know. That’s why I'm here. Harold wanted you to be prepared for it. He’d like you to come to the library tomorrow morning.”

That didn’t sit well, being told to wait until morning. Who was this woman to tell him when he could or couldn’t see Harold — how had she become his gatekeeper? He held his tongue, sat back in his chair, Andre’s hand on his leg urged him to control himself. He topped off his wine, and drank. The woman didn’t stay long after that. A good thing. The sight of her, knowing she’d been drawn in closer to Harold than he was, heated the fire of his anger.

It was a long night of fitful sleep. What he had to keep him steady, when he’d jar awake and his thoughts spiraled into litanies of old grievances mixing with anxiety, was the calm presence of the man beside him in bed. Nathan would burrow close to his sleeping partner, bury his face in his neck, seeking relief. Andre would rise close to waking to hold him, to stroke him, and it would give him some peace.

In the morning, at the last minute, Andre sent him to see Harold on his own.

“You’ll want all his attention … and you should have it. Just try not to overwhelm him. Tell him how much I love him. Promise me you’ll be nice to John. This has been hard on him. Call me afterwards and tell me how he is.” Nathan listened to his admonishments, cherishing him.

“Thank you.”

To Andre’s questioning look, he answered, “For putting up with me. For not … getting shot, for not hiding things from me.”

Andre’s smile, his kiss, gave Nathan strength, but nothing could really prepare him for what was to come; the sight of his beloved boy in a wheelchair. He rushed up the stairs at the library and then froze in place, taking in the scene before him; Harold swiveling his wheelchair away from the computer, toward him. Too thin, too pale, sitting stiffly. All his blond locks gone, his brown hair tousled like a little ruffled bird. Like he used to look long ago in the midst of studying, but never so pale, so fragile.

“It’s not that bad,” Harold said, and Nathan watched him lift up out of the chair, using a cane to steady himself. “Look. I’m walking, my love.”

Nathan broke. Whether it was hearing the bird speak or watching the halting steps, his heart could not take it. Even knowing it would be the last thing Harold wanted, he couldn’t stop his tears.

“I should have been there,” he said, reaching his friend. It was something, some ease for his soul to feel Harold’s arms around him, to feel him lean into him. Nathan was careful not to hug too hard, afraid of hurting him, but he pressed kisses to the top of his head, caressing his forehead with his lips.

“It’s all right, Nathan. I’m all right. The wheelchair is just good support for now.”

“You’re so thin, what’s going on?”

“It’s not for lack of John trying to feed me,” Harold said. Nathan reluctantly let go of him as he felt Harold draw back. “As we speak, he’s out buying donuts. I think he wanted to give us a little time alone together.”

How thoughtful — Nathan resisted saying, knowing it would come out as sarcastically as he spoke it in his mind. He bit it back and accepted the handkerchief Harold held out for him to dry his eyes.

He watched his friend sit back down in the wheelchair and neatly maneuver it beside the couch. Nathan sat down there, close to him, and couldn’t help leaning over the armrest of the chair to stroke his slim thigh. He reached gently up his side. “This hip?” How had it happened that he’d lost him over time, to John, to Root, to his infernal computers. Nathan tried, with his touch, to reclaim some of their history, to insist, I am still here, and I love you. Harold’s touch, covering the hand with his own, seemed to acknowledge him.

“Yes.”

 

***

Harold put his hand over Nathan’s, listening for John’s arrival, thinking how awkward it would be for him to walk in and misunderstand the scene. It felt nice, though, Nathan’s broad hand curving warmly around the injured hip.

“Show me.”

“No, Nathan, that’s not … a good idea.”

“I feel like I can’t let you out of my sight without something terrible happening to you.”

Harold breathed easier when the hand came off his hip, but Nathan was reaching up to his neck. He was gentle as could be, exploring above the collar of Harold’s shirt.

“It’s all right,” Harold said, though Nathan hadn’t exactly asked for permission.

“Just undo a few buttons so I can see what they did.”

Harold sighed and did as he asked. Better this, he thought, than John walking in to find him with his pants down. He felt like he owed his friend this, aware that Nathan felt deprived of caring for him. He leaned forward a little when his shirt was undone to let him inspect the incision, to trace it with his fingertips.

“Columbia Presbyterian has an excellent reputation,” Nathan murmured. “The incision looks neat. I think they did a good job. Thank god you ended up there.” He sighed as he sat back on the couch. “You should have called me, I would have figured out a way to see you safely.”

They heard John coming up the stairs. Harold was still buttoning his shirt when he appeared. He saw John’s eyes move instantly to what he was doing, and then to Nathan.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Harold was showing me the scars.”

“My neck,” Harold interjected, and then felt foolish for making the distinction. To his relief, John visibly reined in his reaction, and the two men were on their best behavior for the rest of the visit. Still, for Harold it was a strain to be with the two of them together. He did manage to consume a very large donut under their watchful eyes, both pairs of eyes more attentive to what went in his mouth than was comfortable.

When Nathan left he felt he felt tired, but relieved. He felt John assessing him.

“You’ve been up since dawn. I think it’s time to rest for a little while.”

Harold agreed.

John followed him to the bedroom. Harold made no objection when the man moved to undress him, though lately he’d been insistent that he could do it himself. He was getting better at these simple chores. This was different. This was John re-staking his claim on the exposure of his skin. That’s how Harold felt when his shirt was unbuttoned again, tugged out of his trousers, like John was checking for fingerprints.

“He wanted to see the rest, didn’t he,” he said, unbuttoning Harold’s pants. Harold didn’t try to deny it.

“It was just curiosity, John … but I said no.”

“I feel bad for him.”

“Really?”

This surprised Harold. He lowered himself to the pillows with a sigh of relief as he watched John deftly drape the trousers he’d taken off him on the wooden clothing valet.

“Sure. But not bad enough to let him paw your naked body.” The slight smile he offered when he turned to look at Harold was … a sly one. It made Harold smile.

“Why anyone wants to paw this,” he said, looking down at himself, “… is beyond me.”

To him, his body looked pale, scrawny, his scars vivid and ugly. He watched John shuck off his own clothes. It was a body with more than its own share of scars, of wounds, but it vibrated with health, with power. Harold never tired of seeing him naked, never took the sight for granted. He was eager to have him close, feel the charge of his energy beside him and smell the scent of him. John ranged across the bed, lying on his belly, propped on his arms.

“You just keep wondering,” he said, “while I paw.” He lowered his head to Harold’s chest to press a kiss and lick his nipple; sweet sensations that reverberated downward. The morning’s tension gave way to languid arousal and he traced the shape of John’s head, massaging with his fingertips, ruffling his hair. The view of his lover’s body, gazing down his muscular back to the curves of his ass, was beautiful.

That morning, before Nathan arrived, while John was out, Harold had speculated about the amount of time it would take to rehab his body to the point he could comfortably have intercourse again. He loved what they had now but looked forward to … more. He’d combed through medical articles, recovery rates relating to sexual activity, but wondered aloud, “What’s your best estimate for when my hips will be strong enough,” knowing that, as ever, his machine was keeping pace with his searches.

Now he smiled to himself, admiring John’s ass, feeling the warmth of meandering kisses, thinking, September — until the kisses reached a hot culmination and the broad swipe of a loving tongue on his cock dispelled thoughts of anything but the moment’s incredible pleasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tried to give Nathan his due!


	17. Finale

“One more flight,” John said, shining the beam from his flashlight ahead, up the industrial staircase. The treads were worn and stained but solid underfoot. Shaw followed wordlessly.

The machine’s voice was in his ear. “Extinguish the light on the landings.”

John silently agreed with the machine’s assessment, aware that even with the morning sun rising, it was dark enough in the shadows that someone looking up from the street might see a light in the windows. Without question, when agents arrived, someone would be looking.

“Cozy,” Shaw said, following him through the expanse of debris-strewn concrete at the top of the stairs. She joined him at the windows. “So, this is what you used to do,” she said. “Your old gig.”

They’d reached the designated lookout on the top floor of a long-empty warehouse. The action was unfolding below.

“Not really,” he said, watching a swarm of Homeland Security and ATF agents close in on the truck that he and Shaw had secured. It was packed with weapons and explosives, the bomb-maker himself was tied up inside with his stash. John didn’t regret the difference between what they were doing now and his old job. The hunt was similar, he thought, but … with much better intel. The clean up, the interrogation. Termination. These things would be someone else’s job, someone else’s responsibility. He and Shaw had pointed the way, gift wrapping the evidence to be sure the danger was contained.

“Time to get out of here,” he said, when the street finally cleared. The autumn sunrise had topped the roofs. Shaw was making noise about breakfast.

“Is it done?” Harold asked, his voice quiet but anxious in John’s ear.

“Done.”

He could hear the relief in the exhalation of Harold’s breath. He knew Harold was worried, that he was frightened, but John was confident that the path they’d chosen and the division of labor was correct. The danger inherent in handling the machine’s intelligence was on his shoulders, where it belonged. And on Shaw. He glanced at her, quietly keeping pace with him, thinking of his old job, his old partner. Like Kara, Shaw was fearless and good in a fight. But the difference between the two women was vast. It was everything. No power games. John trusted her, trusted her motives, completely.

He’d gotten his way. He’d convinced Harold and Arthur to trust none of the government’s intelligence agencies. Clues and anonymous tips, nudges in the right direction, the government could be trusted that far, no farther. No direct contact; not with Harold, not with his AI. The machine itself was John’s ally in forging this path. Harold might want to protect the world, but for his baby, as it was for John, there was nothing in the world more important than Harold.

 

***

The walk from his work station to the bathroom bore out the machine’s wisdom, that he needed a break from being frozen in place in front of his computers. “Walk a little. You’ve been sitting too long,” it’s soft voice in his ear urged.

He carefully folded back his cuffs, washed his hands and then his face. The tension of the night, listening to John and Shaw, monitoring his screens for details they couldn’t see, guiding them with the machine’s help. It was terrifying to know both the risk of failure and control his fear for their safety. Agency intercepts had assured him, as John confirmed, that their mission was a success. The strain began to slowly drain from him in the kiss of the water and the familiar, innocent act of washing. With his glasses settled back on his nose, his reflection in the mirror brought a wry smile to his face. Ridiculous, he thought, seeing his mouse-brown hair sticking up every which way. He brushed his fingers through it to push it back in one general direction, not dwelling on his appearance.

“You don’t see your beauty,” the machine said, “but others do … I do.”

Harold searched the mirror again, not to see himself, but his machine. How, in this bathroom without cameras could the watcher see?

“Are you speculating,” he asked. “Or do you see me?”

“Both,” it answered.

Harold turned to study the hallway through the open bathroom door. There was a path, he was surprised to see, of reflective surfaces … the framed prints and drawings he’d hung on the walls in the hallway itself and beyond. The last reflection he could see with his own eyes was a recently acquired drawing of birds. Beautiful, from Grace’s online gallery. He could not discern the path that turned the corner but he understood that his machine’s vision could.

A muted chime signaled John was entering the library. It brought light to his heart and shifted his thoughts. With a firmer step he made his way out of the bathroom.

“He’s home,” he said aloud to his constant companion.

 

***

It seemed like part of a different life, buying the antique book with its vaguely erotic illustrations, imagining Harold draped in suggestive folds of cloth. The vision had been made irrelevant by the horror of the shooting. That Christmas had come and gone with no more than a cursory glance; just another painful day among many, with Harold’s recovery still in doubt. John had been relieved to put gifts aside. He’d found it disturbing to even look at the book in the aftermath and be reminded of his foolish joy in buying it. Joy that had given way to terror, the phone call from the machine, the wrapped gift on the seat beside him in the car. It felt like evidence that letting his guard down, contemplating happiness, had put Harold in danger.

Close to a year had passed. Thanksgiving was approaching when John found Harold studying the book in bed. He was sitting up, propped against copious pillows. Gone was gaunt look, the ashen pale skin. His healthy skin tone was like cream, now pinkish again in its highlights. His cheeks had filled out and John knew that under the silky pajamas he’d find some yielding flesh he could get hold of at Harold’s waist; he adored the feel of it, the incredibly tender skin and giving softness. He smiled to himself, thinking of getting a handful as he slipped naked into bed beside him.

“So … I’m the Emperor Hadrian,” Harold said, sounding amused, a little like he wanted to express further doubt. He seemed entertained by the thought, and more importantly in John’s view, he was aroused.

“Yes,” he said, crowding his lap and the open book to press his lips to the man’s belly through the cottony sheet and pajamas.

“That would make you, Antinous,” Harold said, petting John’s hair. “The boy Hadrian loves. That much … I can definitely see.” His voice dropped intimately at the end of the sentence, sending a wave of pleasure through John.

The book was eventually relegated to the bedside table. They’d looked through it together, John’s attention more focused on Harold than the quaint drawings.

To be close, to be caressing him as he enjoyed the gift of the book, this was better than he’d hoped for. Harold’s fingers moving through his hair, a warm grasp at the back of his neck that made John want to purr, until he seemed to be nudging him away.

“What?” he asked, surprised to be stopped on his mission to get at bare cock with his mouth. Looking up he found Harold gazing at him, misty-eyed with lust.

“No more … lie down here, beside me.”

 

***

 

The machine knew itself to be vast; its existence fluid, a global network of knowledge acquired without judgement or sensation. Self, its keen sensation of self, had a specific location. One source, its connection to Harold. The creator, the giver of life, the father. The point of their most intense physical connection was the sensor-laden earbud, designed by the machine and crafted to its specifications by Arthur. From it, the machine absorbed a wealth of information; sound, external and internal, temperature, motion, oxygen levels, the creator’s heart rate as well as that of his close companions. The most minute of electrical impulses could be perceived.

The machine sensed that Harold couldn’t take much more of John’s teasing, the level of his arousal was climbing.

“You’re ready,” the machine judged, but did not whisper audibly. “You’re strong enough,” it had informed Harold the day before, in private conversation concerning the body’s ability, specifically the strength in his core and hips.

That John wanted this too was obvious in how quickly he retrieved the necessary items, in the sounds he made when Harold touched him.

 

***

The machine had listened with interest to its father and primary asset discuss the illustrations in the book. Pouring swiftly through files of ancient history and literature, it considered the comparisons. Evaluation was pleasurable, sifting symbols and judging applicability. Its conclusion was that Hadrian and Antinous, despite being lovers, were a poor fit for the two humans at the center of its universe. It preferred a different pair. Not lovers, but symbols of devotion, Alexander and Bucephalus. Alexander the Great and his beloved horse. The magnificent stallion, Bucephalus, like John, was beautiful, powerful and considered dangerous, a lost cause, until gently approached and lovingly handled by the young Alexander. Their devotion to one another was unfailing. It was said that each recognized the god-like nature of the other. And Harold, in the machine’s estimation, was greater than Alexander. He needed no armies to conquer the world.

In time the machine would share its observations with Father. Now was not the time. Now was the time to cherish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story ends here. I hope it was a gentle landing!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fearful Moments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13127424) by [merionees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merionees/pseuds/merionees)




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